Life Worth Living

Life Worth Living Plot Summary

Introduction

Sarah had been living what most would call a successful life. At 35, she had a thriving career, a beautiful apartment in the city, and enough disposable income to enjoy regular vacations. By all external measures, she was thriving. Yet on a random Tuesday evening, while scrolling through social media and seeing friends celebrating their achievements, she felt a strange emptiness wash over her. The question appeared in her mind with startling clarity: "Is this all there is?" This moment of existential questioning isn't unique to Sarah. Throughout human history, people have experienced these sudden awakenings - moments when the comfortable routines of daily life are disrupted by deeper questions about meaning and purpose. The Buddha had his awakening upon seeing suffering outside palace walls. Tolstoy, at the height of his literary fame, found himself questioning the value of his accomplishments. These moments often arrive unexpectedly, like unwelcome guests that nevertheless bring valuable gifts.

Chapter 1: The Awakening: When Routine Meets Existential Questions

Sarah had been living what most would call a successful life. At 35, she had a thriving career, a beautiful apartment in the city, and enough disposable income to enjoy regular vacations. By all external measures, she was thriving. Yet on a random Tuesday evening, while scrolling through social media and seeing friends celebrating their achievements, she felt a strange emptiness wash over her. The question appeared in her mind with startling clarity: "Is this all there is?" This moment of existential questioning isn't unique to Sarah. Throughout human history, people have experienced these sudden awakenings - moments when the comfortable routines of daily life are disrupted by deeper questions about meaning and purpose. The Buddha had his awakening upon seeing suffering outside palace walls. Tolstoy, at the height of his literary fame, found himself questioning the value of his accomplishments. These moments often arrive unexpectedly, like unwelcome guests that nevertheless bring valuable gifts. What these experiences reveal is that human beings naturally seek more than comfort, security, and pleasure. We hunger for something that transcends the material - a sense of purpose that connects our individual lives to something greater. This hunger isn't a flaw in human psychology but rather a feature, pushing us beyond the confines of routine existence toward deeper engagement with life's fundamental questions. When we avoid these questions, we risk living what philosophers call an "unexamined life" - going through motions dictated by cultural expectations rather than conscious choice. The examined life, by contrast, requires courage to face uncertainty and ask difficult questions: What truly matters? What gives life meaning? What kind of person do I want to become? These aren't questions with simple answers, but the very act of engaging with them transforms our relationship with ourselves and the world around us. The journey toward a more examined life begins with recognizing those moments of revelation when they appear - those unsettling feelings of emptiness or questioning that signal something important is missing. Rather than distracting ourselves from these feelings, we can learn to welcome them as invitations to deeper living, stepping stones toward a life that feels not just comfortable, but meaningful.

Chapter 2: Redefining Success: Beyond Health, Wealth and Happiness

Michael had achieved everything society told him would make him happy. After graduating from an elite university, he landed a high-paying job at a prestigious consulting firm. He worked relentlessly, climbing the corporate ladder while accumulating the trappings of success - the luxury car, the waterfront condo, the exotic vacations documented meticulously on social media. Yet at 40, sitting alone in his perfectly appointed living room, he felt a profound sense of hollowness. "I've checked all the boxes," he thought, "so why don't I feel fulfilled?" This modern vision of success - what we might call the "Walgreens vision" of a long, happy, and healthy life - dominates contemporary culture. It's pitched to us incessantly through advertising, social media, and even well-meaning advice from friends and family. The underlying assumption is that health, wealth, and happiness are not just components of a good life but its very definition. We're rarely encouraged to question whether this vision is sufficient or even correct. Consider Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated at 39 while fighting for justice. Or Abraham Lincoln, who suffered from crushing, persistent melancholy throughout his presidency. Or Lady Constance Lytton, whose health was permanently damaged by her hunger strikes for women's suffrage. None of these lives fit neatly into the "long, happy, healthy" paradigm, yet few would argue these weren't lives of profound meaning and impact. What these counterexamples suggest is that perhaps we've been measuring success with the wrong metrics. A truly successful life might sometimes require sacrificing health, wealth, or conventional happiness for the sake of something more valuable - justice, truth, compassion, or integrity. This isn't to glorify suffering, but to recognize that meaning often emerges from engagement with life's difficulties rather than avoidance of them. The challenge for each of us is to develop a more nuanced understanding of success - one that incorporates not just personal comfort but contribution to others, not just achievement but growth, not just pleasure but purpose. This redefinition isn't about rejecting health, wealth, or happiness, but about placing them in proper perspective as potential means to a meaningful life rather than ends in themselves. True success might be better measured by the depth of our connections, the integrity of our choices, and the positive impact we have on others' lives.

Chapter 3: Sources of Responsibility: Who or What We Answer To

James had always prided himself on his independence. "I answer to no one," he often declared, making decisions based solely on his preferences and desires. When a friend suggested his actions might have moral implications beyond his personal satisfaction, James dismissed the idea: "Who's to say what's right or wrong? I decide what's best for me." Yet when his choices began hurting people he cared about, James found himself wrestling with an uncomfortable question: Was he truly as free from responsibility as he claimed? This question of responsibility - who or what we answer to - lies at the heart of how we navigate life's deeper questions. The student Leah Sarna demonstrated this powerfully during a class discussion when she asked a fellow student: "Who are you responsible to?" The question left him momentarily speechless. As an orthodox Jewish woman, Leah understood herself as responsible to her community and to God. Her observance of Shabbat or keeping kosher wasn't just personal preference but fulfillment of responsibilities to something beyond herself. Different traditions offer varying answers to this fundamental question. Confucius taught that we are responsible to the traditions we inherit and the relationships that sustain us: "A man who respects his parents and his elders would hardly be inclined to defy his superiors." In Islamic tradition, the Quran describes a primordial scene where God asked all human souls, "Am I not your Lord?" and every soul answered yes - suggesting we made a commitment to God before entering this life, one we may not remember but that binds us nonetheless. Others, like philosopher Immanuel Kant, locate the source of responsibility within human reason itself. For Kant, moral responsibility comes from our rational nature - we answer to the universal moral law that reason itself reveals. This view suggests that moral obligations aren't imposed from outside but arise from our very nature as rational beings capable of recognizing universal principles. What all these perspectives share is the recognition that a life without responsibility to something beyond our immediate desires lacks depth and meaning. Without a sense that we answer to something - whether tradition, community, God, or universal reason - our choices risk becoming arbitrary, and the question of how to live loses its urgency. The sense that we are accountable gives weight to our decisions and dignity to our struggles. Perhaps the most important insight is that responsibility isn't a burden that limits freedom but the very condition that makes freedom meaningful. When we recognize that we answer to something greater than ourselves, our choices gain significance beyond momentary satisfaction. The question isn't whether we will be responsible, but to whom or what we will acknowledge our responsibility.

Chapter 4: Transforming Pain: Finding Meaning in Suffering

Elena had always believed that happiness was the ultimate goal of life. She carefully constructed her existence to maximize pleasure and minimize pain - avoiding difficult conversations, steering clear of challenging situations, and distracting herself whenever uncomfortable emotions arose. Then her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. As Elena sat by her bedside during those final months, she experienced a profound shift. The pain was immense, yet somehow, in caring for her mother through suffering, Elena discovered a depth of love and meaning she had never known in her pursuit of happiness. This experience challenges our cultural assumption that pain is always an enemy to be eliminated. In Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, written from his prison cell after losing everything, he makes a startling claim: "Sorrow is the supreme emotion" humans are capable of. Far from seeing his suffering as meaningless, Wilde came to believe it revealed something essential about life: "The secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything." For Wilde, sorrow wasn't pleasant, but it was true - it echoed the reality of life in all its complexity. Buddhist perspectives offer a different approach. When a man attempted to seduce the nun Subha with promises of pleasure, she responded by demonstrating her detachment from bodily pain and pleasure - even going so far as to pluck out her own eye to show the ridiculousness of his fixation on her beauty. For Buddhists like Subha, the contentment of enlightenment transcends both pleasure and pain, offering a calmness that remains undisturbed by either extreme. These perspectives suggest that how we relate to suffering may be more important than whether we experience it. Viktor Frankl, drawing from his experience in Nazi concentration camps, observed that people could endure almost any suffering if they found meaning in it. "Those who have a 'why' to live," he wrote, "can bear almost any 'how'." This doesn't glorify suffering but recognizes its potential to deepen our humanity when approached with purpose and understanding. Perhaps the question isn't whether a good life feels good, but whether it feels true - whether our emotional responses align with the reality of our human condition in all its joy and sorrow. A life that acknowledges both the beauty and tragedy of existence may offer a more authentic kind of fulfillment than one dedicated solely to the pursuit of pleasure. In embracing the full spectrum of human experience, we discover not just happiness but something more profound: meaning.

Chapter 5: The Courage to Choose: Agency in an Uncertain World

Before witnessing his brother-in-law in a refugee camp, Mohamad Hafez's life had a clear trajectory: upward mobility in his architectural career. Born in Syria and educated in America, he had secured a position at a prestigious firm, designing skyscrapers for corporate clients. Success, by conventional standards, was his. Yet seeing his fellow architect - his own family member - displaced by war transformed Hafez's understanding of his life's purpose. Suddenly, building "shiny buildings for rich corporations" seemed hollow when measured against the suffering of his homeland. This moment of reckoning led Hafez to reimagine his life's direction. While maintaining his architectural career, he began creating intricate scale models depicting both the beauty of pre-war Syria and its devastating destruction. He reduced his work hours to make time for art that bore witness to suffering and shared refugee stories with Western audiences. His Islamic faith, previously practiced mechanically, became the animating center of his existence. "What did you do when Syria was burning?" became the question he imagined God asking him on judgment day. Hafez's story illustrates the profound difference between asking "What will make me happy?" and "How should I live my life?" The first question focuses on means to an already-determined end. The second asks about purpose itself - what ends are truly worth pursuing. Many of us spend our lives answering the first question while never seriously engaging with the second, allowing default cultural values to determine our direction without examination. This deeper question of how we should live involves two essential dimensions. First, what ends should we seek through our agency? Utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham would say we should maximize happiness for the greatest number. Virtue ethicists like Aristotle would emphasize developing excellence of character. Religious traditions often point to obedience to divine commands. Second, who should we take into account as we act? Should our concern extend only to ourselves, to our immediate circle, or to all humanity - perhaps even to future generations and non-human life? These questions can't be answered once and for all through abstract reasoning. They require ongoing discernment as we navigate specific situations and relationships. What they demand is not certainty but courage - the courage to choose a direction even without guarantees, to take responsibility for our choices, and to remain open to revising our understanding as we learn and grow. The truly courageous life isn't one that avoids difficult choices but one that faces them squarely, with awareness of both our freedom and our finitude.

Chapter 6: Facing Failure: Paths to Redemption and Growth

As Oscar Wilde sat in Reading Gaol, he reflected on the relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas that had led to his imprisonment. What troubled him most wasn't the legal punishment but the realization that he had betrayed his own artistic calling. "In allowing you to stand persistently between Art and myself I give to myself shame and blame in the fullest degree," he wrote. Despite his notorious wit and self-assurance, Wilde recognized he had failed to live according to his own deepest values. This kind of personal failure - failing not just at a task but at being the person we aspire to be - is universal. Sometimes it comes through dramatic lapses, but more often through small compromises that accumulate over time: little lies, broken promises, moments of indifference where compassion was called for. We drift from our highest ideals toward whatever offers immediate gratification or fits better with prevailing social norms. And when we finally realize we've botched it, the recognition hurts. Our first instinct when confronting failure is often denial. We refuse to admit wrongdoing, shift responsibility, or redefine our actions to avoid acknowledging failure. This impulse is understandable - admitting failure is painful and leaves us vulnerable. Yet denial only compounds the problem, investing us in proving our innocence rather than growing through honest reckoning with our shortcomings. Different traditions offer various approaches to failure. Peter Singer suggests starting small - making modest changes that build confidence for larger transformations. Jewish tradition emphasizes teshuva (repentance), which involves confession, restitution, and commitment to change. Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön advocates compassionate awareness - clearly seeing our patterns without harsh self-judgment, allowing natural compassion to guide transformation. What these approaches share is recognition that failure, while painful, can become a doorway to growth rather than a dead end. The key lies in how we respond. Do we hide from our failures or face them honestly? Do we use them as opportunities for deeper self-understanding or reasons for self-condemnation? Do we seek to make amends where possible and commit to living differently going forward? Perhaps most importantly, how we respond to our own failures shapes how we respond to others'. When we recognize our own capacity for failure - and our need for compassion and second chances - we become more capable of extending the same grace to others. In acknowledging our imperfection, we discover not just the possibility of personal redemption but the foundation for genuine community: shared vulnerability that connects us across our differences.

Chapter 7: Transcending Self: Connection Through Shared Vulnerability

James Baldwin grew up Black in mid-twentieth-century Harlem, experiencing firsthand the cruelty and injustice that humans inflict upon one another. As a writer and activist, he witnessed the civil rights movement and the violent opposition it faced. Yet Baldwin's response to this suffering wasn't despair but a profound insight: "Life is tragic, and, therefore, unutterably beautiful." Our shared vulnerability, he believed, should draw us together rather than drive us apart. Baldwin saw that much of America's racial strife stemmed from attempts to deny this fundamental vulnerability. White Americans, seeking to secure themselves against life's fragility, defined themselves through superiority to Black people. This strategy not only harmed Black Americans but poisoned White Americans morally: "Whoever debases others is debasing himself." The solution, Baldwin argued, required both social change and personal transformation - facing painful truths about ourselves and our history while recognizing that "each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other." This vision of transcending self-protection to embrace our interconnection appears across traditions. Buddhist teachings emphasize that suffering stems from craving - the ego-centered attachment that grasps at pleasant experiences and rejects painful ones. The Buddha's "middle way" offers liberation not by eliminating pain but by letting go of the self that suffers through attachment. When we recognize ourselves as "non-self" - contingent, changing collections of phenomena rather than fixed, independent entities - the fires of ego-attachment die out. In Islamic tradition, thinker Abu Hamid al-Ghazali taught that all suffering comes from God's wise and benevolent decree. Since God is supremely wise and good, everything that happens - including suffering - serves a greater purpose we may not yet understand. This perspective fosters patience, trust, and gratitude "under all circumstances," allowing believers to transcend self-centered reactions to hardship by placing their experiences within a larger divine narrative. Friedrich Nietzsche offered yet another approach, seeing suffering as essential to growth and self-overcoming. "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger," he famously wrote. For Nietzsche, the attempt to eliminate suffering only diminishes life's intensity: "Happiness and unhappiness are sisters, even twins that grow together." True nobility comes not from avoiding pain but from transforming it into depth and strength. What these diverse perspectives share is the recognition that transcending our default self-protective responses to suffering opens possibilities for deeper connection and meaning. When we stop trying to secure ourselves against vulnerability - an ultimately futile project - we discover what Baldwin called "the truth of pain and the truth of joy." In acknowledging our shared fragility, we find not weakness but the foundation for authentic community: "The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."

Summary

Throughout our exploration of life's deeper questions, we've encountered diverse perspectives on what constitutes a truly meaningful existence. From Mohamad Hafez's realization that professional success alone couldn't fulfill his deeper purpose, to Oscar Wilde's prison epiphany about artistic integrity, to James Baldwin's vision of shared vulnerability as the foundation for human connection - these stories reveal that purpose often emerges precisely when we move beyond comfort and confront life's most challenging questions. What unites these varied approaches is the recognition that a life worth living requires more than the pursuit of health, wealth, and happiness. It demands engagement with something beyond ourselves - whether through responsibility to others, confrontation with suffering, or transcendence of ego-centered attachments. The path to meaning isn't found in avoiding life's difficulties but in approaching them with courage, compassion, and a willingness to be transformed by what we encounter. Perhaps the most powerful insight is that our deepest fulfillment comes not from perfection but from wholehearted participation in life as it actually is - with all its beauty and tragedy, joy and sorrow, success and failure. When we stop trying to secure ourselves against vulnerability and instead recognize it as our shared human condition, we discover not weakness but the foundation for authentic connection.

About Author

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Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and the founding director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. “One of the most celebrated theologians of our time,” (Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury), Volf is a leading expert on religion and conflict. His recent books include Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Persisting Enmities, and Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation—winner of the 2002 Grawmeyer Award in Religion.

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