My dealings with other human beings undergo a particular selection, determined by need and other tendencies.
One has particular convictions and ideas of and about that which encounters me in life, a certain intuition of life. The new comes into life through exceptional experiences. One is thrown this way and that by oppositions. At first this life is especially intensive, impulsive, in the various directions and spheres of activity, or in all of them. One [33] gets wrapped up in something, is caught up [gefangen] in something (or en-snared) [be-fangen]. Then, once again, everything simply passes by; one is thus not actually involved. Or once again: one is happy about life, lives with great hopes, gives himself to others. Life is a passion. Then once again it's agony. One suffers from life and its imperfections; one is overwhelmed by what it "brings" every day. Hours of despair come; one is repelled by everything obtrusive. This, one must renounce, but the other falls into your lap. People to whom one is close, with whom one lived in a common direction, become alien; others tread the narrow realm [Bezirk] of their own lives. One speaks out to them, they befriend, love one another. People cultivate themselves in community with others. And in all of this living, one is, from time to time, there for himself. One considers everything he does, makes plans, ''sets(!) himself up"; is not satisfied with himself in regard to a performance; one attends to himself, corrects and conducts "himself;' tries to take himself forward; sees himself in a society; or simply lets himself go where the moment takes him.
Thus, all kinds of things, which lie in the circle of each one of us, and in the circle that is always going along with life streaming forth: our environing-world—landscapes, regions, cities and coasts; our with-world—parents, siblings, acquaintances, superiors, teachers, students, officials, strangers, the man there with the crutch, the woman over there with the elegant hat, the little girl here with the doll; our self-world—insofar as that directly encounters me in such and such a way and directly imparts upon my life this, my personal rhythm. We live in this environing-world, with-world, self-world (generally environing-)world. Our life is our world, which we seldom see, but rather always, if also in a way that is wholly inconspicuous and hidden, "are by it": "captivated;" [34] "repelled;' "enjoying;' "renouncing:' "We are always somehow encountering:' Our life is the world, in which we live, into which and in each case within which the tendencies of life flow. And our life is only lived as life insofar as it lives in a world.
LIFE AS THE SPHERE OF PROBLEMS 27