How to Adhere to a Vision of Life

Life Worth Living author Matthew Croasmun offers the following reflection on how to "[live] the sorts of lives we told ourselves we would."

A former Life Worth Living student reached out recently:

I think back often to the [final] paper we wrote for Life Worth Living [in which students articulate their own vision of the good life] — in some ways, I feel that I attained a higher level of self-awareness in that paper than I have now. Working and facing the pressures of life, where time and resources become compressed, has given me less time for introspection than I had at Yale. I'm curious to hear if you have thoughts on how to adhere to a vision of the good life? I often think that I know what thevision looks like… but there's a gap in my willpower, where I don't feel I have enough time and energy to make that vision a reality. 

I replied:

Basically, I think the key to adhering to a vision of life boils down to two things (which, in the final accounting, maybe truly be just one): 

1. Community: We need people around us who, at least to a certain degree, share our vision of a good life, and can support us in adhering to the vision we have discerned. We need to be in regular relationship with these folks, sharing life—meals, recreation, perhaps some shared projects that enact that vision of life we share together. Some of these folks need to know us well enough to cut through the BS of our self-presentation and have permission to speak into our lives. Basically, they need to be able to hold us to account for living as we said we would. Perhaps obviously, these are not easy relationships to build or to maintain, but they’re crucial. We have to be open to the possibility that, at a given moment, they may see us better than we see ourselves. Because we need to be able to trust them when we are wandering from what we once knew to be what matters most.
2. Practices: We need a set of habits that a) help us fall in love with what we believe matters most and b) help us put these values into practice. The first is     probably more potent than the second. Let’s call the first “disciplines.” Disciplines don’t aim at changing our actions; rather, they aim at changing our hearts, our attitudes, our desires. If our desires align with what matters most, our actions will almost inevitably follow suit. Disciplines can include things like regular     reflection (e.g., journaling), prayer, meditation, silence, walks in the woods, etc. The Dalai Lama’s meditations on loving-kindness are great examples. We also need, though, the second sort of practices: those that aim more directly at shaping our actions. You might simply call these “commitments,” and they ought not be underrated. A commitment, after all, is a “pre-made decision.” And they can be as silly as my daily commitment to do the NYT crossword puzzle with my wife (which, nevertheless, serves an important purpose of connecting us every day, no matter what, in an activity that we both enjoy) or as meaningful as a weekly commitment to a religious worship service. Whatever they are, at their best, these commitments populate our calendars with our values. 

I say these may, in fact, all be one thing, because, of course, community often forms around a set of shared practices. This is at least one crucial thing that religious communities have done for adherents for thousands of years. Cultural enclaves (especially diaspora communities) can function similarly. It can be daunting to try to find or build these things for yourself in our fragmented contemporary world, but I don’t really see any way of avoiding it: these are just the things we need in order to live the sorts of lives we told ourselves we would.