We Have Some Work to Do / The Practice of a Life Worth Living

Being able to perfectly describe the good life is only valuable to the degree it helps us and others actually live good lives.

That might seem obvious. And, to a degree it is. Rabbis, revolutionaries, and writers of just about every persuasion agree: you gotta walk the walk.

But just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s easy. History is full of folks whose ideals far outstrip their lives. We have to be careful if we don’t want to become one of them. It’d be a tragedy if all our reflection on life’s big questions simply left us with better and higher ideals but unchanged lives.

Lecturer at Yale College and Life Worth Living Director, Matt Croasmun discusses how to put a life worth living into practice in this chapter-by-chapter video curriculum series based on his bestselling book (with Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Miroslav Volf), Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.

Transcript

In Life Worth Living, we talk a lot about what a good life would be. What it would would mean for life to: be led well, go well, and feel the way it should. How we ought to respond when life doesn’t go the way we hope it will. What we should do when we fall short of our ideals.

We talk about the answers to these questions needing to fit together, being subject to a “recipe test”—but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Being able to perfectly describe the good life is only valuable to the degree it helps us and others actually live good lives.

That might seem obvious. And, to a degree it is. Rabbis, revolutionaries, and writers of just about every persuasion agree: you gotta walk the walk.

But just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s easy. History is full of folks whose ideals far outstrip their lives. We have to be careful if we don’t want to become one of them. It’d be a tragedy if all our reflection on life’s big questions simply left us with better and higher ideals but unchanged lives.

That said, the easiest way not to end up a hypocrite is to lower your standards until the life you’re living already clears the bar. That won’t do either.

Hard as it is, the only way forward is to find ways of turning insights about the good life into actually good lives…  We have some work to do.