Jose Ortega y Gasset refers to the “life project” in different parts of his work. He considers it what characterizes the human being; since humans do not have a nature, they do not have a fixed way of being. For example, the tiger, even if it wanted, would not be able to “detigerize” itself.

While the tiger can’t stop being a tiger, and can’t detigerize, the human being lives at a permanent risk of dehumanizing. [1]

In front of a cub of any species, even those closest to our stage of evolution, we can predict, with some certainty, what that cub will become once it matures. This is impossible when it comes to a human baby because:

The life that has been given to me, I have to live it myself. It has been given to me, but it is not complete, unlike how stars and stones are given their fixed and untroubled existence. [2]

For Ortega, human life is not definable as a unit, but as a relationship between who lives, me, and the context that surrounds it. This relationship takes place in time, and its history, tale, or drama are what every life is going to be, there’s nothing fixed. How is the body included in all this? Ortega places it as part of the context. What’s meaningful is not the body itself, but all that it does by taking advantage of the conditions or accepting the limitations it is provided. Exactly like any other circumstantial condition it is in, such as the family, the country, or the time in which it was born.

What’s human is a human’s life, not its body, not even its soul. The body is a thing, and so is the soul, but the human itself is not a thing, it is a drama: it is its life. Humans have to live with the body and soul they were given by luck. One and the other—body and soul—are the closest devices with which the human must live, meaning, those with which he has to exist in its context. [3]

Meaning that just as, for example, the financial means a family has, the city or the neighborhood, the education it has access to, the social or cultural opportunities that characterize the medium in which the human’s life takes place, are going to exert an indubitable influence on what its life will become. The human’s psychophysical conditions also exert an influence on the final result.

Our life is like this: I have to live and develop myself in the world, among things and other men, with a body I got by chance and which suffers diseases, with a soul which may be lacking in will, memory or intelligence. [4]

But what should catch someone’s eye, and we assume it’s not because it is such a common and frequent fact, is the lack of a fixed relationship between context and the future development of existence. We are far from stating that context lacks importance, but it is still a factor that forms part of every individual’s life. Even if:

… Life consists of humans finding themselves, without knowing how, having to live in a determined and inexorable context. [5]

On the other hand:

… Our life is our being. We are whatever our life is, and nothing more; but that being is not predetermined/solved from the beginning, we have to decide it ourselves, we are those that decide what we want to be. [6]

Where and when is this choice born? What is it that causes children in the same family, who were raised in similar conditions and were under similar influences, to turn into great people on one hand, while another ends up as the “black sheep”? Furthermore, what causes some teenagers from poor families to turn to illegality, whereas others overcome their situation and insert themselves in society? What should be taken into consideration are “psychological factors”. Of course! That’s it! But what are we referring to when we mention these “psychological factors”? Most people tend to relate psychological factors to environmental or family influences, which would later cause their lives to develop down particular paths, different and unique to each person. If we were to look at the wide variety of actions that humans take, we would be able to relate these paths to the different ways people have of facing their “struggle for survival”. If human conduct were logical, it would be probable that needs would have already vanished from Earth a long time ago. Rationalism finds in the needs of subsistence the main engine of human action. But what if the human action is not related to subsistence, and even more so, endangers it? For example, the mountaineer that sets out to climb the Alps? What need would this action fulfill? For such a big goal, much effort, time, money, and training would be required. All of this suggests that this action implies the fulfillment of a need, but not one related to subsistence. What about the young man who decides to become an artist, even though he knows that if he were to join the family business, he would have a much better subsistence? It is this that causes us to meet businessmen, politicians, artists, masters of different trades, scientists, sportsmen, women who choose to have children over following a career (or vice versa), etc. And even among each of these trades and occupations, not one is the same as another, they all differ in the way each person chooses to integrate it in their lives. Two lawyers can work as such for reasons and with objectives completely different from one another, and the same would apply to two politicians, two businessmen, or two doctors. Listing the different actions the human being performs is practically impossible, but their existence leads us to suppose that a factor different from “psychological influences” or practical needs exists. There is, in fact, a need, which is to fulfill a life project, which is the way in which life’s force tries to manifest itself in each human being, and which in turn grants each person the energy required to push onwards as the protagonist and leading actor of their own personal drama, their life. Without it, living would not be living, but just existing with no reason to exist or an objective to fulfill. The cultural crisis in which we live does not favor life having a meaning beyond comfort and consumption. The unease that prevails is the most eloquent proof of humans having other needs that are sometimes ignored, which we refer to as “spiritual needs”.

…Those diverse vital projects or life programs that our fantasy elaborates, and among which our will, another psychic mechanism, can freely choose from, do not present themselves to us as something familiar, but as something strange, coming from who knows which personal and dark secret coming from deep within us, calling us to choose one life project and discard the rest. All life projects present themselves as possible—we can choose any we want—but only one presents itself to us as what we must be. This is the weirdest and most mysterious ingredient of humans. [7]