We talk a lot about how we want to live. About good food, beautiful places, mindful travel and the balance between work and leisure. We think about what makes us feel good and try to give our days a shape that suits us. Yet I keep coming back to one question: Do we actually feel alive in the lives we are building?

Here on THE SHIFT, we have begun thinking about aliveness. With the new print issue of THE Stylemate, we take that conversation onto paper. Its title is WORLDS WITHIN. It points to the worlds we carry inside us — and how profoundly they influence what we perceive around us.

A painting can tell two people entirely different stories. A room can change how we feel. Even a familiar task can catch our attention again when we give it some thought. What interests me about these shifts is that they are possible in everyday life. Often, they begin with curiosity and a willingness to be surprised.

Stories that leave something open

In Mercedes Helnwein’s paintings, a story seems to be underway already. We see a gaze, a gesture, a situation. What happened before and what follows remain unresolved. In conversation with Nina Prehofer, the artist discusses her work and the freedom she allows herself within it. As viewers, we bring our own memories and ideas. We become part of the story the painting tells.

Es Devlin approaches this participation through space. Her stages and installations bring together light, language, architecture and people. They influence where we look and how we experience ourselves as part of an audience. Her work reminds us how fluid perception can be: a change of position can open up a different view.

Around the table and out in the world

From the stage, the issue also takes us into a kitchen. At Plum Village, the Buddhist community in southwest France, cooking, eating and washing up are part of living together. Chopping vegetables, waiting for one another, sharing a table: these simple activities give attention a practical form. Our story around The Plum Village Cookbook makes room for them.

At ESH Hotel in Nosara, Costa Rica, the question of connection takes another form. Tropical greenery, courtyards, timber and exposed concrete shape the architecture. Nature stays present as we move through the property. This member of the Lifestylehotels™ Selection also brings a question into the issue: how do we engage with our surroundings when we travel?

A thought on newsprint

For me, part of the pleasure of this issue is that these stories appear on newsprint. You pick it up, open a spread, fold it and put it down. Perhaps it stays on the table and someone else starts browsing. An image can sit in front of us for a while without the next one taking its place.

Aliveness should not become another task. We do not have to turn our lives into an ever more ambitious project. I am interested in what happens when we become more receptive again: to people, to our environment and to things whose meaning takes time to unfold.

The new issue brings together some of these encounters. Here is a first look. Perhaps there is a story you will want to stay with a little longer.

Discover WORLDS WITHIN, the new issue

Which image, place or encounter last changed the way you see things?

Mike Schwalbach and Nikki Mol have spent years bringing together pieces of land in a small Portuguese village near Leiria. More than ninety individual plots, some cultivated for generations, others left largely untouched after their owners moved away. Today, they form Quinta Filippa, a forty-hectare estate with sixteen guest rooms.

But the interesting part of this story isn’t really the hotel.

It’s the fact that Mike’s mother grew up in this village, that he spent his childhood summers here, and that the place now carries the name of his eldest daughter, Filippa.

Three generations, connected by a piece of land. And somewhere in between, a journey that took the family beyond Portugal and eventually brought part of it back.

I like stories like this. Perhaps because they challenge our usual understanding of progress.

We tend to associate moving forward with moving away. Leaving home, discovering new places, building a career, meeting people who think differently, learning things we could never have learned by staying where we were.

And there’s a lot to be said for that. The desire to explore is one of the things that makes life interesting. It changes our perspective, challenges our assumptions and allows us to develop an identity beyond the circumstances into which we were born.

But what happens to everything we discover along the way?

A place that never quite disappeared

Mike grew up in the Netherlands, with a Dutch father and a Portuguese mother. His childhood summers were spent in the village where his mother had grown up, moving between relatives’ homes, fields and forest paths.

The family history reflects a familiar European story. During the 1970s and 1980s, relatives left the region for Germany, looking for opportunities elsewhere. Some eventually returned. Others built their lives abroad.

The land remained, although it gradually became divided into smaller and smaller parcels through inheritance and changing family circumstances.

When Mike and Nikki acquired their first property here in 2017, their initial idea was relatively modest: a holiday home where they could spend time with family.

What followed was something neither a conventional hotel development nor a simple restoration project. Over the years, they acquired neighbouring plots and began reconnecting a landscape that had become fragmented.

Mike brought his personal history and connection to the place. Nikki, whose background and perspective were shaped in the Netherlands, became central to translating their shared ideas into something that could actually work. She oversees operations, the guest experience and the continuing development of the estate.

Today, Quinta Filippa is an intimate countryside retreat, with restored buildings, gardens, woodland and a hospitality concept that combines time in nature, movement, food and personal attention.

The architecture reflects that gradual process. Existing stone walls have been preserved, old materials reused and new elements introduced without attempting to erase the past. Wooden beams sourced from former telephone poles still carry traces of their previous lives. Local craftspeople and artists contribute to the spaces, which continue to evolve.

What interests me is how much of the project seems to have grown from a relationship with the place rather than from a predetermined concept of what a luxury hotel should be.

And then there is the name.

Quinta Filippa.

Named after their eldest daughter.

It’s a small detail, but it changes the way I look at the entire project.

Somewhere between leaving and returning

There is a tendency to romanticise the idea of returning to our roots. As though the place we came from holds some essential truth about who we really are.

I’m not sure it’s that simple.

People leave for good reasons. Sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes ambition, sometimes necessity. And the experiences they gather elsewhere are no less part of their identity than the place where they began.

Returning doesn’t undo any of that.

In fact, the most interesting thing about coming back may be precisely what we bring with us.

Different experiences, relationships, ideas and ways of seeing the world. Things we couldn’t have known before we left.

In Mike and Nikki’s case, a family connection to a Portuguese village has become the starting point for a project shaped by international experience, contemporary design, cultural exchange and a very personal understanding of hospitality.

One detail from the estate’s history stayed with me.

There is an old communal bread oven on the property. For decades, villagers gathered there on Sundays to bake bread for the week ahead. It was part of a shared rhythm of life, long before anyone imagined welcoming hotel guests to the same place.

The oven has been restored. Today, chef Paolo de Vries uses it to bake bread for Quinta Filippa’s guests.

I like the fact that its purpose hasn’t changed all that much.

People still gather around food. Someone still makes bread. The surroundings and the people have changed, but something of the original idea survives.

Not as a museum piece, but as part of everyday life.

And perhaps that’s what makes the difference between preserving the past and allowing it to continue.

What comes next

The more I think about Quinta Filippa, the more I find myself returning to the relationship between generations.

We spend so much of our lives trying to create something for ourselves. Independence, opportunities, experiences, perhaps a certain amount of security.

But at some point, another question can become equally interesting: What can we create from all of this that might be useful to someone else?

Not necessarily a business or a property. It could be knowledge, confidence, curiosity, a sense of belonging or simply the freedom to explore.

I don’t think the next generation needs us to prepare every step of its journey. Quite the opposite. It needs room to make its own decisions, discover its own interests and occasionally take directions we would never have chosen.

What we can offer is a starting point.

And that starting point doesn’t have to be the same one we inherited.

This is what I find so appealing about the story of Quinta Filippa. Mike’s connection to the land comes from his mother and the summers of his childhood. Together with Nikki, he has brought something new to it. Their daughter now lends her name to the place.

Whether Filippa will one day want to continue the project is entirely her decision. The story doesn’t depend on that.

What matters is that something which once belonged to one generation’s memories has become part of another generation’s possibilities.

I imagine that, years from now, the old bread oven will still be there. Perhaps the buildings will have changed again. Perhaps the gardens will look different. And perhaps someone will have an entirely new idea of what the place could become.

That’s how it should be.

After all, the point of returning home cannot be to make sure nothing ever changes.

Sometimes we travel a long way to discover that the place where we began still has a future.

And sometimes we get to help shape it.

— Thomas

THE SHIFT by THE Stylemate

ONE THING TO THINK ABOUT

What would you like to pass on to the next generation that you didn’t have when you started your own journey?

Quinta Filippa opened in September 2026 near Leiria, Portugal, and is a member of Lifestylehotels™, the hotel collection associated with THE Stylemate.

Fifty chairs. Every one different. For Dutch designer Teun Zwets, they represent fifty possible beginnings.

For his upcoming presentation during Dutch Design Week, he is developing more than a single new collection. He is starting fifty at once. Some of these chairs will remain individual pieces. Others could become the beginning of something that occupies him for years.

What interests me about this project is the freedom within it. Something is allowed to emerge before its scale or destination has been decided.

What the hands discover

At THE Stylemate, I encounter many stories about design. Often, we see the finished result: a room, a piece of furniture, a collection. The decisions that came before remain largely invisible.

Zwets’ way of working draws attention to that process. He begins in the workshop and allows materials, discoveries and practical decisions to guide him. Through making, he discovers which ideas hold promise.

His Splitted Collection grew from wood he split with an axe. The structure of the material became the starting point for the design. Careful finishing and glossy lacquer give the furniture its completed surface; the character of the split wood remains visible.

I like that: the process is allowed to leave its marks. Something unexpected can suggest a direction.

In my own work, I recognise the tension between an idea and what actually comes of it. A subject takes on a different emphasis during writing. A conversation reveals a connection that was never planned. Only when something takes shape can we really begin to work with it.

How much must we know beforehand?

Preparing things makes sense. But preparation can also become a state we struggle to leave. One more consideration, one more version, one more reason why the moment isn’t right.

Zwets’ fifty chairs therefore bring a very practical question to mind: how small can a beginning be?

An experiment does not immediately have to carry the weight of the next big decision. It can simply reveal something. Whether a material works. Whether an idea sparks curiosity. Whether we want to continue.

Perhaps we give some possibilities too little room because we expect them to behave like finished answers from the start.

This also applies to life beyond work. Extending an invitation without having planned the entire evening. Learning something without already knowing how good we might become. Sharing a thought that is allowed to change during the conversation.

Beginnings like these make us receptive to experiences we could scarcely have imagined beforehand.

One among fifty

Zwets sees his chairs as potential new collections. Choosing is therefore part of the process, too. Every direction does not need to be pursued. The freedom to begin gains its value from the attention we give to what follows.

For me, this offers a lovely connection to aliveness: engaging with something, noticing its response and allowing that to shape the next step.

There is pleasure in an idea suddenly developing a character of its own. In being surprised. In seeing a vague intention become something we can look at, touch, discuss or change.

Among those fifty chairs, there could be one that stays with Zwets for a long time. Which one it is remains to be seen.

First, he had to start making it.

What would you like to try if the first attempt didn’t have to be the final answer?

Thomas
THE Stylemate

A tree can be many things. Shade on a hot day. A beautiful view from a window. Timber, a habitat, a memory of a particular place. What we see in it also depends on what matters to us at that moment.

I’m currently reading Zoë Schlanger’s The Light Eaters. I’m still partway through the book, so this is also a snapshot of my reading. What interests me is how a book about plants can set our own ideas about life in motion.

One thought in particular stays with me: the world as a prism. In a conversation with Emergence Magazine, Schlanger is quoted saying: “The world is a prism, not a window.”

A window promises a clear view of what lies outside. A prism reveals how many different views are possible. Light refracts; colours emerge. A small change of angle is enough for something else to become visible.

Perhaps this is a useful starting point for THE Shift: we can learn to change the angle from which we look at something familiar.

The green in the background

Plants are such an ordinary part of our world that they can easily become background. We choose a garden for a photograph, put a plant in a room, travel through a landscape. The green is there. It frames whatever we direct our attention towards.

Schlanger’s book brings this life into the foreground. She follows research into plants’ capabilities and the arguments about how we should understand them. Plants respond to their surroundings and adjust their processes to changing conditions. What looks still can be full of activity that escapes our immediate view.

We are familiar with plants responding to light. Research can also investigate how mechanical stimuli are processed within a plant and influence its development. Findings like these create a more detailed picture of how an organism is connected to its environment.

How far terms such as intelligence or consciousness apply remains disputed. A response to a stimulus does not establish subjective experience. That distinction belongs to the story the book opens up.

What interests me is precisely the possibility of looking more closely without already having a final answer. A plant does not have to resemble us for its way of living to deserve our attention.

The measures we bring

This is where the larger thought begins for me. Our view is full of experiences, concepts and expectations. They help us understand the world. Sometimes they become so familiar that we barely notice how much they determine what we perceive in the first place.

We associate activity with visible movement. We recognise a response more easily when it arrives at a pace that matches our own. And we can usually make better sense of what resembles us than of something living under entirely different conditions.

What does that mean for everything outside these familiar patterns?

As I read, I wonder where I am too quick to consider my picture of something complete. A place, a person, a way of living. How often do I mistake familiarity for understanding? And how often am I simply missing the right angle?

It would be too easy to turn botanical research into a general rule for life. A tree does not explain how we should treat one another. But encountering another way of living can loosen our certainties. It reminds us that our categories are tools. We can examine and change them.

The paradigm shift that interests me here also lies in that willingness: allowing for the possibility that our existing picture is incomplete. Science can help us do this. It makes previously hidden things observable while requiring new interpretations to withstand scrutiny.

A life we take part in

In my first post, I wrote about aliveness: how attention can find expression in our lives. With Es Devlin, that thought led to the moments when people experience something together. With The Light Eaters, the view opens further. What life surrounds us, even when we barely notice it?

A garden takes on a different meaning. The green we select for its colour, form and atmosphere lives under conditions we help shape. A landscape has its own relationships and processes long before we visit it. And an old tree is a habitat even when nobody needs its shade.

For me, this creates a sense of belonging that is, initially, quite concrete. We breathe, eat, live and move in a world sustained by other life. Ecological dependencies can be studied. The idea of a shared consciousness would be a different, philosophical question.

What delights me right now is how much room this kind of reading creates for curiosity. It gives the familiar something unfamiliar again. The tree remains the same. My picture of it can change.

I will keep reading. And perhaps linger a little longer the next time I look at the green outside a window.

Which book or experience last changed the way you saw something that had seemed completely familiar?

Thomas
THE Stylemate

What interests me about this moment is how little it sometimes takes to change our relationship with others. A moment ago, they were the people ahead of us in the queue. Now we are singing with them.

In my first post, I wrote about aliveness. About how what we learn through mindfulness can find expression in our lives. Since then, I have been thinking about the spaces that make this possible. Where does attention become an encounter? Where do we begin to feel part of something?

Es Devlin’s work gives this question a spatial form.

An audience is a temporary society

The British artist creates stages, sculptures and installations. She has worked with Beyoncé, U2 and in opera; her materials include light and language as much as bodies, movement and architecture. What particularly interests me is the way she sees an audience. Devlin calls it a “temporary society”.

That thought stays with me. A community does not always have to share the same history, beliefs or background. Sometimes it begins when people give their attention to something together for a while.

Of course, a concert does not turn strangers into friends. And shared wonder does not resolve a conflict. But for a moment, we can experience what it feels like to be there together. That has a value of its own.

Devlin designs the conditions for this. Her spaces change what we see, how we move and whom we encounter along the way. In her work, the audience becomes part of what happens.

Who belongs in our picture of the world?

For “Come Home Again”, a 2022 installation outside Tate Modern, Devlin took the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral as her starting point. Into its cutaway form, she introduced her drawings of threatened species: birds, moths, plants and fungi.

What moves me is the shift in attention. An architecture we associate with human history becomes a space for other forms of life. The drawings invite us to look more closely, including at the life we might otherwise walk past.

This makes me think of a connection that reaches far beyond art. What we design says something about whom we make room for. A table, a hotel lobby, a public square: in each case, form, arrangement and atmosphere help determine whether we want to stay and whether an encounter can happen.

For me, this also connects the subjects we explore at THE Stylemate. Art, architecture, design and hotels shape the situations in which we live. They can awaken curiosity, draw us out of a habit or prompt us to offer someone a seat.

What remains of a shared moment

“Es Devlin: Other Worlds” at London’s Design Museum, running from 2 October 2026 to 4 April 2027, traces three decades of her work. It also reveals drawings, models and her creative process. This interests me almost as much as the great stages: the idea that a shared experience begins as a thought on a sheet of paper.

Perhaps this is the question I want to take away from Devlin’s work: what can we bring into being ourselves?

It does not have to be a stadium. It could be a dinner where we introduce two people. A room in which someone feels welcome. A conversation we give more time to than we had originally planned.

Here, aliveness becomes something very tangible for me. We notice what moves us and create opportunities to share it with others. That can lead to joy, sometimes to a new idea, or simply to the wish to meet again.

After the concert, the lights come on. Everyone looks for their coat, their companions, the exit. The temporary society disperses. On the way home, the song is still playing in our heads.

When did you last share a moment like this with people you barely knew?

Thomas
THE Stylemate

For years, we have learned to slow down.

To breathe. To meditate. To listen to our bodies. To become more conscious of what we eat, how we sleep, where we travel, what we consume and with whom we spend our time.

We learned to look inward.

And perhaps we needed to.

In a world obsessed with speed, productivity and permanent availability, turning our attention towards ourselves became almost a radical act.

But lately, I have found myself thinking about a different question:

What do we actually do with everything we have learned?

Because awareness alone cannot be the destination.

From Mindfulness to Aliveness

Maybe the next step is Aliveness.

I don’t see Aliveness as the opposite of Mindfulness. And I certainly don’t believe we need another lifestyle trend telling us that everything we have been doing for the past ten years is suddenly outdated.

Quite the contrary.

I see Aliveness as a natural evolution of Mindfulness.

Mindfulness gave us tools.

Aliveness asks us what we are going to do with them.

If meditation makes me calmer, perhaps its real value begins when I bring that calmness into a difficult conversation.

If travelling teaches me curiosity, perhaps that curiosity should make me more open towards people whose lives are different from mine.

If art allows me to see the world differently, perhaps I should allow that new perspective to change the way I live.

If taking care of my body gives me energy, perhaps that energy isn’t meant merely to improve myself. Perhaps it is there so that I can create, participate, help, laugh, love and contribute.

And if we have learned to become more conscious of ourselves, perhaps the next challenge is to become more conscious of each other.

What are we optimising ourselves for?

There is a strange paradox in contemporary wellbeing culture.

Something that originally promised liberation from performance has itself sometimes become another form of performance.

We count our steps. Measure our sleep. Analyse our heart rate. Optimise our nutrition. Track our meditation. Perfect our morning routines.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this. I do some of it myself.

But at some point, I think we have to ask:

What are we optimising ourselves for?

To become even more efficient?

To live even longer?

To perform even better?

Or perhaps simply to become more capable of living?

That distinction fascinates me.

Health, Mindfulness and personal development become much more meaningful when they stop being ends in themselves.

A healthy body allows us to participate.

A calm mind allows us to listen.

Curiosity allows us to connect.

Creativity allows us to imagine alternatives.

And awareness allows us to choose how we want to affect the world around us.

Sometimes aliveness is something very simple: a table, a glass of wine and other people. Dexamenes Seaside Hotel, Greece. Photo: [Fotocredit laut Originaldatei]

Aliveness moves outward

For me, this is where Aliveness begins.

It is the moment when awareness starts moving from the inside to the outside.

From me towards us.

And this doesn’t require grand gestures.

It can begin with the atmosphere we create around a dinner table. With the way we speak to someone who disagrees with us. With the attention we give another person. With the beauty we bring into a room.

With generosity.

Humour.

Curiosity.

Hospitality.

Friendship.

Creativity.

Perhaps even with the simple decision not to add more aggression to an already aggressive world.

The things we discovered during the Mindfulness years – presence, awareness, balance, empathy – were never meant to remain private achievements.

They can become social qualities.

Imagine what happens when calmness becomes contagious.

When curiosity replaces judgement.

When beauty isn’t simply consumed but created.

When wellbeing isn’t only about my wellbeing.

And when happiness isn’t something we protect from the world, but something we bring into it.

A place for Aliveness

Perhaps this is also why I am increasingly fascinated by places that don’t simply look beautiful, but make something happen between people.

Dexamenes Seaside Hotel in the western Peloponnese is one of those places for me.

A former industrial winery has been transformed into a hotel without erasing the traces of what it once was. Inside its old wine tanks, people now gather around tables, share food and wine, talk, experience art and projections, and spend time together.

I like the symbolism of that.

A structure originally created to contain something becomes a place for exchange.

Maybe Aliveness works in a similar way.

What we have accumulated within ourselves – awareness, calmness, knowledge, energy – begins to matter differently when we allow it to move outward.

Movement, encounter, atmosphere. Dexamenes Seaside Hotel, Greece. Photo: Nikos Karaflos

We need joy, too

There is another reason why the idea of Aliveness appeals to me.

It contains joy.

For some time, many conversations about how we should live have been dominated by restraint.

Less consumption. Less speed. Less distraction. Less excess.

Much of that criticism is justified.

But human beings also need enthusiasm.

We need colour and movement. Pleasure and beauty. Encounters and sensuality. Laughter, music, food, nature, sport, art, travel – and occasionally a little irrationality.

A meaningful life cannot consist exclusively of avoiding what is bad for us.

It also needs the things that make us want to be here.

Perhaps this is why I increasingly find myself interested not simply in wellbeing, but in being fully alive.

Not louder.

Not faster.

Not more.

Just more present in the experience of living.

From awareness to participation

Maybe we needed the years of looking inward.

Maybe we needed Mindfulness to rediscover silence in a very noisy world.

But perhaps the door now opens in the other direction.

Back outside.

Into our communities. Our friendships. Our families. Our cities. And ultimately into society.

Taking with us everything we have learned.

More awareness. More calmness. More empathy. More curiosity.

And hopefully a little more lightness.

Because the purpose of becoming more conscious of life should not be to withdraw from it.

It should be to participate in it more fully.

Perhaps that is what Aliveness really means.

Not another programme for becoming a better version of ourselves.

But taking what we have discovered within ourselves and using it to make the small piece of the world around us a little more peaceful, a little more beautiful, a little more relaxed – and, yes, a little more joyful.

Maybe Mindfulness was never the destination.

Maybe it was preparation for participation.

— Thomas
THE SHIFT by THE Stylemate

ONE THING TO THINK ABOUT

What have you learned about yourself over the past few years that could now become something you give to others?

FROM THE STYLEMATE WORLD
Discover Dexamenes Seaside Hotel → THE Stylemate