Welcome to my blog!
I’m Jacob, a German-born cosmopolitan, living in Copenhagen. I grew up in a cute little town in Northern Germany but always knew I belong out there in the big wide world. The past few years have been quite an exciting journey for me. I lived in Paris, Ho Chi Minh City, Taipei, and Berlin. I’ve learned speaking several languages, saw breath-taking nature, ate the most exotic food and survived a terrorist attack.
But that’s not what this blog is supposed to be about. I don’t want to talk about glorified travel experiences and recommend you the next ‘must-see’ tourist attraction. No, I want to touch the questions in life that really matter.
A fast-changing world
We live in a fast-changing world. A world, where existential changes are sweeping around us. A world, in which incredible things become possible. Lifespan, health and wealth have improved so much quicker than any of us expected. We live in an age in which for the first time, machines will be smarter than humans, allowing us to finally use our time for the things we really want to do. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?
There’s also a different perspective on this. We’re the most privileged generation, yes. But we are also the loneliest one. It takes me 5 seconds to connect with my friends around the globe, to answer to a story on Instagram, to take a picture and send it to the other end of the world. It is fairly easy to hook up with a different person every week, to get short-term self-validation, to escape into alcohol and Netflix. But what about the things that really matter? What about long-lasting, deep relationships? What about the questions, that we all have deep in ourselves? Who are we and where are we from? Why do we do what we do? How do we find a purpose for our life?
Here to inspire
In this blog, I’m going to raise more questions than I have answers. I’m going to question what you and I do day by day. I’m going to question our routines; the things we do just because always did them. I don’t accept a “That’s just how it is”. Some of this might be uncomfortable, challenging to read. I’m going out of my comfort zone with this blog and show vulnerability. I’m going to challenge myself. Hopefully, I’m going to challenge you. Hopefully, this will make you raise deep, existential, and even naive questions. The type of questions people usually don’t ask because they are so out of our daily dialogues, it seems stupid to ask them.
I want you to agree wildly and to disagree massively
This blog will be a balancing act. I’ll try to weave a path between personal opinions, philosophical questions, and more substantiated and academic thinking. I aim to make this blog interesting and easy to read, but in enough depth to make it useful. In the end, I hope you’ll be as irritated as you’ll be inspired. I hope you’ll agree wildly and disagree massively. More than anything else, I hope I inspire you to think differently, allow yourself to be vulnerable and share your opinions on these stimuli with me or anyone else.
Jacob Nilius