Life Worth Living: The Shape of Our Lives
Life Worth Living: The Shape of Our Lives
Habits, assumptions and incremental change
Last week we considered the Question asked in the book Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.
What matters most? What is a good life? What is the shape of flourishing life? What kind of life is worthy of our humanity? What is true life? What is right and true and good?
None of these phrasings captures it completely. The question they try to articulate always exceeds them. It always escapes full definition. But that doesn’t make it any less real or less important. Hard as it is to pin down, it is the Question of our lives.1
Answers to the Question will be as unique as you are. You may decide that what is right and good and true is different from what I decide. We agree to disagree. Actually, it would be an interesting discussion, and I welcome any comments about what you believe the answer to the Question is for you.
For today, we’ll discuss the shape of a flourishing life:
Life isn’t a series of crises calling for Heroic Moral Deeds. Most of the time, it’s a series of small, seemingly insignificant decisions and nondecisions. It’s made up of habits and assumptions and incremental changes. The shape of who we are and how we live isn’t like Stonehenge. It’s not made by stacking a few massive rocks on top of one another. It’s built over time, brick by brick.2
As we approach the age of retirement, the shape of the lives we have lived to this point comes into focus.
It’s frightening to consider how habits, assumptions, and incremental changes can affect our attitudes and actions and set us on a course to flourishing or insignificant living. Most of us, if we’re honest, are neither one nor the other; we’re both.
The authors describe the irony of the actions of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” and who also owned hundreds of slaves. Did he see the dissonance in this? Perhaps he had habits and assumptions that prevented him from seeing the disconnect between his profound insight and his actions.
In 1792, he wrote in his ledger that he had calculated that his plantation was yielding a 4 percent annual return through the birth of enslaved Black children. It struck him as a sound investment strategy…It seems that Jefferson found dollars and cents a stronger motive than self-evident truths.3
I wonder if he was working on the assumption that it was acceptable to own slaves, and that assumption had been reinforced over the 16 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed. Or perhaps he had developed a habit of calculating his profits and he slowly forgot that all men and women are created equal. Jefferson’s life is a dramatic example of how our assumptions and habits can lead us astray.
Or maybe his heart was in the wrong place, as Blaise Pascal suggests:
We know the truth not only through reason but also through the heart… The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Do our assumptions and habits affect our heart, or does the focus of our heart determine our assumptions and habits? As a Christian, I believe a heart devoted to God sets us on a far better course than a heart devoted to itself. God can, and does, work in us to correct assumptions and cultivate habits with our participation. We may desire a Stonehenge shape, but in my experience, God is all about incremental transformation.
It’s tempting in retirement years to let ourselves off the hook, to tell ourselves that we’ve worked hard, we don’t have to worry about assumptions or habits, we are who we are. But don’t forget that those of us in our 60s and 70s have plenty of time to rework our assumptions and adjust our habits. Where do we want to be in the future? What habits would make that more of a reality? Are long held assumptions holding us back?
Healthy habits of exercise and nutrition are more important as we age, I’m sorry to say. We can’t get away with neglectful habits anymore. Intellectually, it’s important to expand our minds by reading, learning, interacting with interesting people, and challenging ourselves with different activities. It’s easy to give that advice, but not so easy to follow through.
Ageism is an assumption many of us carry that was not explicitly taught but was implied, and for years I bought it. Our culture does not value older adults, therefore gray hair, wrinkles and age spots are to be concealed, but if we treated those as evidence of a life well lived instead of a life that is no longer of use, we wouldn’t be so quick to neglect our potential in our 60s or 70s.
More importantly, I will do all I can and ask God to tamp down internal tendencies like selfishness, pride, impatience and to grow in me the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.4 In other words, to become more like Jesus.
The shape of my life isn’t Stonehenge; it is the product of God’s incremental adjustments to my knowledge, attitudes, habits, and assumptions, and he is not finished. There is still quite a bit of work to be done. May God continue to make incremental changes in our lives to his glory, and may we cooperate fully with him.
He wants us to experience the blessings of a flourishing life well lived!
Have you noticed incremental changes in your attitudes, habits and assumptions? How would you describe the shape of your life?
Photo attribution: November_Sunset_from_inside_Stonehenge_Stone_Circle.jpg, Simon Banton, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Viking, 2023, p. xv
Ibid. p. 79
Ibid, p, 228
Galatians 5:22-23
I have not read “A Life Worth Living”, but I can pass this on. The Lord God Almighty knitted me together in my mother’s womb to be and accomplish what He created me for. Not to be a robot or be controlled by Him, but to be dependent upon Him for all things, to trust in Him for all things, and to seek from Him all things. When my daughter was at death’s door with cancer, it was this Bible verse which helped me ever so much; “Be still and know that I am the Lord Your God”. I am to be still and trust in Him for all things. Being still is the hardest thing I can do. My nature, my whole being wants to take over and be in control, when in fact, I’m not in charge of my life or of others. Mow that I am in my 70’s and I look back, I see that I was at my best when I wasn’t doing for my self, but when I was caring for others, for my wife and children, while I was supervise my subordinates, support and enjoy the friendship of others.
I was looking out my basement window my flower garden (a little bit of Eden) and there were 6 - 8 butterflies fighting over all the flowers, trying to get the best of everything. The joy and wonder of nature. To see all the flowers I planted come to full bloom and to see the bees, butterflies, and birds come and feast. You just loose your breath at God’s creation.
All life is worth living, it’s just difficult when we try and be in control and take away from God what he desires and wants to do for us, therefore we my b e visited with testing or travesty, or anything else to bring us to a closer and more fulfilling life in Him. What I am trying to point to, is we should/must live our life’s objectively, (outside of ourselves), trusting in Him to care for, provide for all we need, and protect us from all harm and danger. It’s is that trusting and believing which we call faith. When we live our life’s subjectively, (focused on ourselves and our own needs and emotions), is when we separate ourselves from God and in many ways, make ourselves out to be gods.
I am enjoying your posts and am intrigued by what you write and provide. Good substance to chew on, think and contimplate.
I'm reading Life Worth Living now and appreciate your recommendation and comments.