Life Worth Living: The Question

What’s Worth Wanting?

How would you define a life well lived? Successful career? Power? Finding and following your purpose? Financial success? Many healthy relationships? Philanthropy? All of the above? I rarely thought about that question in earlier years, but lately it has more resonance.

Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, wrote Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most and teach “the most in-demand course in Yale University’s Humanities Program: Life Worth Living, which students describe as life changing.”¹ I began reading this book months ago and have now finished it. It’s weighty, gives us important ideas to contemplate, and attempts to offer information and tools to answer The Question.

Hard as it is to pin down, it is the Question of our lives. The Question is about work, value, good and bad and evil, meaning purpose, final aims and ends, beauty, truth, justice, what we owe one another, what the world is and who we are and how we live. It is about the success of our lives or their failure.²

Chapters include “What’s Worth Wanting?,” “Who Do We Answer To?,” “What Should We Hope For?,” and “Change is Hard,” among others. The authors are Christian theologians; however, the purpose of this book isn’t to proselytize readers but to provide information and get us thinking. The Buddha, Confucius, Abraham, Jesus, and various philosophical perspectives are a few of the sources that they draw upon.

It’s a book that would have been useful to read 20 or 30 years ago, but I’m not sure I would have had the interest or perspective to understand it at a younger age. These concepts take time and wisdom to grasp, but I’m glad these authors are giving young people a head start, for it will benefit the students, their families, communities and perhaps even the world if they take it to heart.

The chapter “What’s Worth Wanting?” is central to the Question, and it describes four layers of living: autopilot, effectiveness, self-awareness, and self-transcendence. Autopilot is simply following a script without worrying about where the script came from. “We do what we do because that’s what we do.”³ Beyond autopilot is effectiveness, which is asking if what we’re doing is getting us where we want to go, which leads to the third level, self-awareness, which is asking ourselves what we really want. Finally, self-transcendence leads us to ask what’s worth wanting.

Each layer depends on the answers given to the questions asked at the layers below - even, or especially, when those questions haven’t been answered explicitly…We live answers to the deep questions of life even if we couldn’t give those same answers if we were asked for them point-blank. All the more reason to dive in and get used to the deep water.⁴

In my teens and 20s, I followed the script for my life, but it never occurred to me to ask where the script originated. Fortunately, my family was loving, I had a secure and healthy upbringing, and the script - college, career, marriage, and children - seemed reasonable.

At some point, without considering it in these terms, I began to think about the consistency between what I was doing and where I wanted to go and, in the process, thought about what I really wanted. The conclusion I came to was to leave my career and raise my children. It was rough, but I felt that was what I really wanted. From that point, God led me on a path that I didn’t see coming.

I had a rewarding volunteer career and have learned to research, write, and teach the Bible, established many relationships, and loved the work. That never would have happened if I had stayed in my career.

However, when my peers are retiring from rewarding careers, I sometimes feel like I have missed out on the financial and personal benefits of a career. I must face the fact that it’s true. Some can do it all; I couldn’t. I have to remind myself that God calls everyone to unique roles, and I trust that he directed me.

As a Christian, I believe what’s worth wanting is what God directs me to do, but it can be a challenge to hear God clearly over all the noise that the world constantly streams into our consciousness. I have asked multiple times, Was that thought or idea from God or from me? Try it and see. It’s a bit of trial and error. God directs each of us differently.

Retirement is an excellent time to ponder The Question. If what you really want is different from what you have, you have 40 free hours a week to adjust your focus. Perhaps you will decide to spend more time family and friends, go back to school, investigate an area of interest, move, get a part-time job, care for grandchildren and/or parents or take advantage of volunteer opportunities. There is no shortage of options.

God may put something in your path that is not what you would have chosen. I have learned that when he does that it is to teach us or mold our character, for God is most interested in who we are rather than what we do. It can be frustrating when our desired activity suffers while we’re cultivating better character, Following God is not always easy, can be confusing, but I trust it is what’s worth wanting.

A life worth living requires grappling with what’s worth wanting. To answer that question we must transcend ourselves and look beyond this world to eternity. That is difficult, but it’s helpful to remember that Jesus’s life demonstrated that he valued character, attitudes and actions that were opposite of what the world desires.

The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:17

What’s worth wanting? It’s a very good question.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

1. Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Viking, 2023, from the back cover insert.

2. Ibid, p. xv

3. Ibid, p. 12

4. Ibid, p. 4