Unveiling the Path to a Life Worth Living | Miroslav Volf (Yale Professor & Theologan)

30:02This book might wreck your life, right? It may detract you for a moment, at least, or permanently from the direction that you are taking. But in a sense you, you're one of yourselves dies for another to be truly born and to be lived in a way that, that you find yourself, not that somebody else imposes on you, that you find yourself to be truly in tune with your humanity. You know, it's so interesting because again, there's like three perspectives. There's the perspective of yourself right now. Am I experiencing pleasure or not? And you give good examples with Oscar Wilde. So first, let me say that for a second.

30:48There's the perspective of you as an individual experiencing pleasure. There's this perspective of you doing good for society. So that broadens out the picture a little bit. And then there's a perspective of you in terms of an ultimate truth about the universe or the world. And it's almost like the right questions to answer is where you fit in on all of those spectrums, those three spectrums, individual pleasure, societal correctness or goodness, or universal truth. And it's almost like we have three levers where we can decide where we fit in on all three of those spectrums to determine what our life would be worth living.

31:25And those levers could be adjusted. If I'm summarizing the book with an analogy. I think that might be a helpful way to do it. We use it with the help of recipe, right? You have to put these different elements and dimensions of the good life, you have to hold them together. We expressed as well, you have to have recipe and not all ingredients are fitting to be part of the recipes. You can combine them, different ingredients, but some of them will just not fit the recipe at all. And therefore, you have to be conscious of how you adjust those elements. You put it also very nicely in terms of levers.

32:04All three have to be in play, but what would dominate and what would be subordinate might differ from person to person. And as you earlier pointed out rightly, it may differ for a particular single person in the course of their lives. Yeah. And it's worth bringing up the Oscar Wilde example from the book. Like early in his life, he pursued, maybe you can call it more hedonistic pleasure. I'm not, there's nothing wrong with that. He enjoyed it. And it too is a life worth living. And then he kind of, as he grew older, he sort of morphed into maybe more silent pleasures like reading and thinking and, you know, things like that.

32:44But he pursued mostly pleasure and happiness, which is nothing wrong with that. And in the case of Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, it's more like a life worth living for them was maybe one filled with sacrifice. They were willing to give their lives essentially for some greater societal good. And these are almost extreme examples. Like Lincoln and Martin Luther King literally gave their lives for a greater good in society. And Oscar Wilde, he risked jail and did face jail pursuing pleasure. And Buddha and Jesus and those who followed his initial disciples basically gave up society in order to pursue what they felt was a life worth living.

33:31Yeah, I think some of those choices are kind of serendipitous. They happen in the course of life. Maybe that's what happened to Oscar Wilde for a while. and he had to undergo crisis in order to kind of recalibrate himself. And some of them are a matter of, oh, that's okay. I choose one rather than the other because it's important to me now. But others, on the other hand, are not so much choices. I'm wondering whether when Oscar Wilde says, well, we kind of squandered, I squandered my talent in just a kind of sheer hedonism, right? And you think, well, right. If I were Oscar Wilde, and now from perspective as a reader of him, I think, well, I wish he had a little bit fewer of these so that we as humanity can benefit from him much, much more.

34:31And the same thing could happen, you would think about Martin Luther King. It's not, I suppose, at some level, you would say it's okay if he doesn't do what he's doing. But on the other hand, you say, well, it wouldn't have been okay. The path that he chose, the calling that he chose, it's kind of exemplary for him, but it's also, or it's characteristic of him, but it's also exemplary for us. If we don't do in similar situation as Martin Luther King does, there's kind of something telling me I'm not quite living up to what I possibly could, and I might be failing in a significant way. Is that too harsh?

35:14No, but it's interesting because ultimately, all of these people had their successes and failures, but like take Gandhi, who Martin and Luther King was greatly influenced by. Was he a success? He freed India, quote unquote, freed India from the British Empire. But the UK, the United Kingdom was slowly unraveling its empire anyway. And ultimately the India that came out of the UK was split by religious strife, ultimately split into three different countries. There was constant wars and battles and they took a step backwards as a developing country for a while. Now they're accelerating very well.

35:53But, you know, you could argue, was it worth it, him pursuing a greater good when he didn't fully know what would happen, even though his intentions were good? Yeah. And in some ways, I think you point to a very, very important element on unpredictability of life. And if you assess the value of life only against the backdrop of consequences, you might as well be second-guessing yourself all the time what's kind of worth doing. I think many of the traditions would say the consequences might be important, but you ought to pay attention to something more than just consequences of your deeds. Indeed, some would say you can completely disregard consequences as a kind of moral, strictly, issue.

36:48And, of course, that's another big philosophical, if you want, religious issue to debate about. But it's important to keep in mind, right, so that one might say even if he failed in terms of consequences, what he was aspiring to do and the kind of life that he led had its own integrity that merits deep honoring and identifying with and then might cause you to think, well, how should I assess my life? And it's interesting too that a lot of this is about creativity. Like you look at Oscar Wilde, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus or his disciples, there's a certain creativity in sort of looking at the world and seeing, oh, things can be wildly different and that might be the life worth living.

37:43So take the disciples who you give as an example. I mean, he wants to follow Jesus and he says to Jesus basically, hey, but first I got to just bury my dad who just died. And Jesus says, let the dead bury the dead. And he's not just referring to father, right? He's metaphorically referring to everybody in traditional society is living a kind of walking dead sort of life, but pursuing your personal relationship with God immediately without doubt, without hesitation is a life worth living. Like there's like Jesus basically underlines the immediacy of it. Like you can't even bury the dead. You've got to move now.

38:27I wonder, it's this ability to be so open-minded, you can change your life completely as a way of moving forward. Yeah. One might very well ask whether that's a prudent thing to do. If my son came to me and asked me that kind of a question, I'd say, wait a second. Slow down. Even though I'm a Christian, I identify with this thing. And I would think, oh, you know, wait, wait. But to me, it means also a kind of willingness not to be simply caught in the stream and follow what's around me. You said you articulate that in terms of creativity, in terms of being able to see your future self, the world's future self, so to speak.

39:22in a different way. And then this extraordinary thing as making a wager with your life in order to move in that direction. That in itself, that ability to do that, and the effects that some of the wagers of this sort have had upon humanity, to me is really actually extraordinary. I'll emphasize what you said earlier about the book, is that it's not necessarily, none of these stories are a recipe for how to live one's life. They're just stories and you have to, the individual has to sort of decide. But, you know, so no one suggests just give up everything and let the dead bury the dead. But, you know, I'll give a counterexample from the book.

40:07You talk about the Bhavagad Gita from Hinduism and Arjuna's discussion with Krishna on the battlefield. Arjuna suddenly decides he doesn't want to kill his cousins, even though he's on the righteous side of a war and the cousins are on the bad side. But Krishna explains the concept of Dharma, like this is the right thing. Don't shirk now from what the right thing is, what your Dharma is. But then the flip side is you could argue Peter, his quote unquote Dharma, to use a Hindu term to describe Peter, his Dharma was to be a fisherman and to live that life and live a good life that way. The real critical thing is, are you asking the right questions as opposed to, are you changing your life radically?

40:50I think that's right. And are you sufficiently informed in when you are asking some of these questions, especially since we, I mean, earlier times, the life was lived in certain kinds of grooves. Traditional societies, you followed in the footsteps of mainly your parents. And under extraordinary circumstances, were you able to break out of those? We no longer live in such a society. It's very mobile. Each of us is making our own decisions for our lives, even though under constraint of many forms of circumstances. And in situations as we modern folks live, you have to have at least some sense of what you're doing when you're making your choices.

41:48And for me, it's a question, do I just follow my dream that I haven't sufficiently thought through and know whether it has weight, or do I step back and at different points in my life take resources that I need and try to reflect about courses of life and then take courage to act in a way that is more in sync with not just my dream or desire, but something that has been informed more deeply that will let me avoid living a life that is too light. Milan Kundera's unbearable lightness of being, right? Kind of there's always skirts on some surface, it's kind of maybe even fun and enjoyable, but ultimately it's a foam and it's not a substance.

43:03In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, just when the main character kind of deepens his relationships and including his relationship with himself and his life, that's when he dies. And so in some sense, Milan Kundera is saying that when you're willing to change, there's also potentially going to be consequences that are unknown and could be not what you want. But I think, again, it leads to the fact that are you asking the right questions? And I think that's why I love how you have this, not quite homework, but these questions. Like for instance, and this one is from chapter one, think back non-judgmentally over the last few days.

43:46You say, what questions have been on your mind? Write down your observations. And then you say, stepping back, at what layer do you feel most comfortable? Where do you like to spend your time? Do any of the layers of reflection make you afraid? And I think that's very interesting, because why do you say, why do you want to know, or why do you ask yourself, does anything make you afraid? What does fear have to do with deciding if a path is worth living? Well, I think you need to articulate it so that you know that it's actually present and operating. And maybe the fear is wise and is warning you against something that is true danger, But maybe fear is foolish and it's preventing you from taking the path that actually would be more difficult, maybe a bit scary, but much more promising.

44:35And so I think this kind of taking stock of where I am in an honest way is important for the right decisions to be made. And fears are, especially when it comes to decisions that mark our trajectories of our entire life, they're understandable. Now, when I think when I was adolescent, I'm now 66, and I think back, and I should have been completely paralyzed by making choices that I'm making, directing the arrow of my longing in particular direction. Who knows what would have happened? When you were young, what did you want to do when you grew up? Oh, well, when I was young, pretty early on. I wanted to be a philosopher and a theologian.

45:28which is what I became. But I'm not sure that when I was that kid, if I were that kid right now, not knowing what became of me, whether I would have gone that route. I could have never in a million years imagined that I would be sitting at Yale teaching at a wonderful institution. And yet, I think I kind of admire my adolescent self. It was an unpopular thing to do. And I did it. Yeah, everybody wanted to be like a millionaire or a doctor or whatever. Or in my times, a theologian would have been worse. I was living in former Yugoslavia. Oh, yes, it was against the law. Yeah, basically against the law.

46:15You have doomed yourself to kind of meager existence or maybe having to scrape your existence, doing something else so that you can do the thing that you really, really enjoy. But you know, the fear there for you was important because it kind of moves the compass about what direction you should go. So like, obviously there's fear you're going to live. So on the one hand, you could not have fear and you could say, I can't do that. That's just not done in my society. Or you could say, listen, this is what I want to do. But fear tells me I'm going to make a meager life and I might be, you know, doing something against the government's laws.

46:57The government was not in favor of religion at all. It was a communist government back then. And take Peter again as an example. He could have said to Jesus, I can't do that. I need to bury my father. But instead, it's a meta way of looking at it. Oh, I notice I'm feeling fear. So why am I feeling that fear? Is it a constraint of society? Is it a constraint? Is it really the case that I can't leave right now? Like, I think fear could be a meta way of breaking down what you initially thought was an immutable problem, but actually turns out to have a solution. Oh, there actually aren't, you know, it actually might be better for me to leave right now.

47:36Or for you, I need to move to America at some point and pursue this there because it's a better place to do it. And so fear really could direct you. Yeah, I think that's quite right. I fully agree with you. And then one can work through one's fear when one articulates them. One can also take, I mean, this kind of taking stock of what I do, how I spend time, for instance. I mean, one thing is for me to think about what's in my mind, what my desires are and what my dreams are. It's another thing to say, well, let's sit down and see how I spend time. Let's sit down and decide where do I actually, when left to my own devices, where do I pour my energies and discover what actual desires and proclivities are.

48:31And then I can honor them. I can also say, you know, that's really not what I should be doing. I've got to wake up. How do I do that? Yeah. And again, a lot of it is is questioning like, you know, the questions that you have at the end of each chapter, you know, like for instance, right before part three, uh, there's a page of questions. And one of the questions is how should we live? And so you're basically saying, what ends should we seek through our agency? What standards should we be held to? And so on. So, so this is kind of more on the, when your perspective is on the societal level, like, you know, what should we do and what's our, or maybe not on the societal level, what should we do to live a life worth living?

49:14But what actions does that imply? Does that imply leaving life behind to reduce craving? Does that imply being an activist to make the world a better place? And so on. And these, again, are questions always worth asking. And you point out a very kind of common example. Is it worth it to binge on Netflix TV shows? and on the one hand it sounds trivial to binge on netflix tv shows and nobody should do it because that might not be life worth living but then i was thinking about it i love tv shows and i love hearing stories and watching stories and for me it's it's part of my life worth living i think although i guess i should always question it is is watching stories and i and that's what I love about watching TV.

50:01Yeah, and the question is also not whether one should ever binge on a particular series, as I did most recently watching The Empress. Oh, I haven't watched that one. I really liked it. It's only six episodes in this first season. It was pretty, I thought, pretty good. That's barely a binge, by the way. I binged on Lost, which is 120 episodes. Well, but in a sense felt to me like two evenings or something like that were completely claimed by this series. And I think it was a good use of my time. I've learned something. I enjoyed the story and the struggles that are being portrayed. So it's a matter of what kinds of balance I find in my life.

50:47Is my life one simple binging, right? That may be a really extreme way to ask that question. But that is, I think, how some lives tend to be, kind of simply following the kind of internal cravings. And some of those may be fantastic. And actually, as I mentioned earlier, the goal is actually for your cravings to fit exactly the life as it ought to be lived, right? So that what you deeply desire is in sync with what you have found that you should be doing with your life. And maybe that's for you the case. Yeah, and maybe, you know, and it's interesting. You start off the book talking about the question.

51:31Like you don't say this is the life worth living. But you're, again, using examples and questions. And you capitalize question, but I'll get to that in a second. It's really how you pursue the questioning of a life worth living. And you give these stories to tell from history to tell how different people, characters ask these questions. But I like the fact that you capitalize question because I never noticed this before, but the word quest is in question. And I don't know if that was intentional by the creators of language, but it is a quest. Like how one lives one life is a quest. And it starts with the question of what am I pursuing?

52:14what is the goal of this quest is the question and did you yeah i i just noticed this for the first time on reading your book maybe because questions stood out because it was capitalized all the time but did have you ever thought about that yeah no i we we did and i think there is a there is a sense in which uh our whole life is a quest right uh we never we never fully get to answer the question so that we can just pursue that answer. We always also question how, even if we set a direction for ourselves, how to live that in the here and the now, so that this type of, if you want, reflective accompaniment of life by asking questions and seeking answers is really fundamental to our life.

53:12You know, Socrates and his proverbial unexamined life is not worth living. I think it applies if it doesn't mean simply let me analyze myself, right? Because that kind of life may end up being trite, actually. But unexamined life is not worth living if you go in a particular direction without you examining where it is going, how are you getting there, and whether that befits who you are and who you are supposed to be, that turns out generally not to be life worth living. Yeah, and I want to ask some specific questions about some words and phrases you use. Like, you described the difference between friendship and companionship, and I thought that was a very interesting distinction.

53:58Do you want to describe? It seems to me that friendship, at least how we use it in the book, it describes something much deeper, some kind of a shared fundamental orientation in an endeavor in which we engage together. and I think for the examination of our lives, for thinking about who we are and who we should be, it's this kind of relationship to others that we need. Obviously, we can have many other kinds of relationship, but this is essential. Companionships can be much more superficial. It can be fun, great thing to do, but it's hard to pursue seriously a vision of life worth living if you're simply on your own.

54:56I think we see ourselves and we see the world better in company of others. I think sometimes it's hard to find time, hard to keep that time, hard to keep that commitment and companionships or friendship rather with others is essential for that project. It's no accident that monastic communities were founded or that people gathered in synagogues regularly or that people went to churches and so forth. So that this kind of sense of belonging together and together exploring is essential. Right. So it's like maybe I can also tell me if I'm describing the difference correctly. Like companionship might be two people who sit next to each other at a workplace, at a corporation.

55:51And so they might like each other. And their questions that they have for each other is how can we do better work or enjoy work or, you know, be more effective at work. So they're sharing a more simple question, whereas friendship, they're sharing the deeper question of, are we both living a life worth living? Yeah. And how do we pursue that? Yeah. Or they might go, the other companionship might be, I might go after work, I might have a drink and have really good time, which nothing against either of these two forms of companionship. but I think we need generally more and you describe it quite well what that more might be and then another thing that was really fascinating like I used to always so you basically describe Pima Chodron's use of the word regret and it always used to be kind of you know when I was growing up and so on everyone would say oh I have no regrets about how I live my life and I realized for myself that I actually had lots of regrets and I was relieved to see in your book what Pima Chodron said about regret that that also almost could be like a compass to show you what direction you're going.

57:07Maybe you could describe the four steps of regret that she talks about. You know, I should reread those. I know exactly what you're talking about. Do you know where the... Yeah, I'll find it because I know what you mean. I often have to reread my own writing to remember the things I wrote. Hold on, I'll find it. And then, yeah, here we go. She says, you're right, the elemental struggle, she says, is with our feeling of being wrong, with our guilt and shame at what we are. And she says there are four factors. And first there's regret. But then you say it's not wallowing in guilt, it's liberating.

57:50Because you admit that you're wrong and you're fine with that. You give up your self-defense mechanisms. And the second one is recognizing your personal failures for what they are. You refrain, but you refrain compassionately. You don't yell at yourself, oh, I can't believe I did that. Damn it, why did I do that? And then the third is you basically decide not to do it again. And basically that's the third and the fourth, is you decide not to keep doing these errors and not to do them again. Yeah, so that's one mode of dealing with failures in a variety of forms of failures, mis-opportunities, or something like that in life.

58:34Yeah, different traditions have different ways of doing it. I think it's very helpful, especially not to let regret kind of hold you captive, but rather to kind of regret lightly enough that you can move positively forward. You know, in the Christian tradition, there's a sense of repentance. There's a sense of asking for apologizing to others. There's a sense if you've done something wrong to kind of restore that which you have endured by that, and the sense of my own apology, my own regrets is already a first step towards something new, because unless I recognize something as wrong, I can't turn away from it.

59:20So, I think regrets are, when properly handled, are very useful and important things, because they confer value or they express that we value life as we have lived and therefore not want to have lived it in a kind of mindless way or ways that hurt others or hurt ourselves. So regret serves a very important function. And most of the traditions have a way of dealing with a failure to achieve our intended way of life. And I like how she views regret. Like it's very important to have regrets compassionately. Like you don't yell at yourself, like I shouldn't have done that. But you use it as a way to move closer to yourself by understanding or reframing these actions from the past.

1:00:17Yeah. You know, I think when I talk, in different things that I do, I often speak quite a bit about forgiveness. It's one of the themes on which I've published and when I speak. It's really interesting how attentive audiences become when you start talking about forgiveness. And because we all have this experience, often we don't want to admit it, but deep down we all have experience of having failed and not being able either to forgive or to be forgiven what we have done. And almost regularly, I encounter the question, well, but what do I do when I can't forgive myself? And what do you say? So, I respond as a Christian theologian.

1:01:03And in the Christian Bible, in the New Testament, there is a very interesting line which says, when your heart accuses you, know that God is greater than your heart. meaning the God who has forgiven you is greater than your heart. In some ways, there is a kind of word that has been said over you and appreciation. You can make it an analogy to somebody loves you completely irregardless of whether you have committed this deed, made that failure or not. And you can then get out of it into light with the help of just that love directed toward you. Since you're a Christian theologian, let me ask you a question from the New Testament about that.

1:01:55And so there's the famous story in the New Testament, and correct me if I make any details wrong, but there's Jesus with the adulteress. So there's a woman that the crowd is about to stone, and Jesus basically sits in between them and the woman, in between the crowd that wants to kill this woman and the woman. And, you know, he essentially says, anybody here who hasn't committed a single sin, you can throw the first stone. And then he just kind of ignores what's happening. And one by one, they leave because they've all committed a sin. And he himself says, I too can't throw the first stone. So he says to the woman, just go home and don't do it again.

1:02:36So do you think he is also saying that, you know, he has committed a sin, but he loves himself. And so he's forgiven himself. Like, what do you think he's saying about himself in that story? Yeah, I don't think that the story is, he says, neither do I condemn you. Ah, okay. So he doesn't put himself in with the crowd. He doesn't put himself in with a crowd who would potentially, who have come to throw the stones. They cannot condemn you, but I will not condemn you either. So I think he puts himself on the side of the mercy. And there's a part in this story where he writes with his finger on the ground.

1:03:19Yeah. And it's mysterious what was he writing there, whether there is any sense in which we can divine that. and there are all sorts of conjectures. Maybe he was writing their sins on the ground so that they couldn't throw that first stone at her. And why do you think the author of that decided to include that detail and not say what he was writing? I have no idea. It has puzzled the interpreters and I think one interpretation is as good as another because nobody knows. And what do you think the Stoics, on the other hand, thought about regret? Since they were very much about living a life of virtue, if let's say there's something from their past that they disapproved of, how do you think they dealt with regret?

1:04:10I'd have to refresh my knowledge of stoicism, but as emotion, I think this kind of negative emotion, just like fear or hope, my understanding is that they would want to simply diminish it as an emotion. You concentrate on the presence. Fear and hope are not something that you should worry about. Therefore, also how you deal with the past, you would deal in a kind of analogous way. So it's almost like both kind of solutions are worthy of following. But on one side, you have, it's okay to have regrets, but just deal with yourself compassionately. And on the other hand, the Stoics or maybe Buddha, they're not saying don't have regrets, but just it's not important to dwell in it.

1:05:00You know, move forward. And from now, from this point onwards, live a life of virtue or live a life of contemplation or, you know, whatever your faith is. Yeah, and you've got also maybe in the Christian, and I think if I understand correctly, some of the Jewish tradition as well, that there is a kind of mercy there that you ought to have toward yourself and that God has toward you. And since God's word counts, God's decision about your life is fundamental, then you can incorporate that mercy toward yourself into your own life. Those would be some of the alternatives. What do you think about self-talk?

1:05:42Like, for instance, you indirectly referred to it in that section on regret where you say, you know, have compassion to yourself. Don't say in your head, I'm such an idiot. I did this, you know. So that's an example of negative self-talk. And that sort of sticks to us when we're constantly expressing hatred towards ourselves as opposed to compassion towards ourselves. Do you think there's a role for self-talk in how we live our lives? You know, maybe some. Self-talk is the mode of stepping, so to say, outside of oneself and looking at oneself and often scolding oneself, right, for what one has done.

1:06:17There may be a positive element in that one identifies the wrong, right? But staying with this self-scolding and constant nagging at oneself seems to me not really productive and not particularly useful. I think either the Buddhist or the Christian way of dealing with it is much healthier. Either kind of letting the thing simply pass as something that is passed as often one is taught in Buddhist meditation to do, or recognizing and separate yourself from that deed. You are greater than that deed. You yourself are more valuable and your entire life has not been defined by and ought not to be defined.

1:07:10You ought not to define your life by that wrong that you have committed. You are loved. Yeah, and also it's interesting looking at the, let's call it the more hedonistic approach, like Oscar Wilde regretted squandering his talent in the pursuit of pleasure. we don't really know whether he hated himself for it or he loved himself for it but he did use it as a formula for change you know when he got out of jail he you know he probably still enjoyed the same pleasures but kind of also shifted a little bit his his focus and and so use it as an agent of change inside of himself so that's interesting also yeah or you can do i think it's one of the options we we mentioned in the book also just forget about the past concentrate on on future you can do better.

1:07:57You can try better. You can try harder. You know, I, I, the way I sort of, again, it seems like almost like a cliche to say, I don't have any regrets. And a lot of people say it all, you know, if I regret anything from the past, I wouldn't be in the life I'm in today. But for myself, I know I had regrets because I have this weird thing where if I'm thinking something that I regret, I have a tendency to blurt out almost like a Terencene syndrome. I sort of blurt out a curse. And my kids used to have their friends come over when they were little. And sometimes I'd just be sitting at my computer and I'd curse myself or say I'll curse.

1:08:33And my kids would say to their friends, oh, daddy just does that sometimes. Ignore him. And then I realized, oh, I do regret things. I can't say, oh, I don't regret anything. But anyway, you know, I really love the book. It's got me asking a lot of questions, you know, and as you put it, you capitalize the Q in question, what is, you know, what is a life worth living? And the book, of course, is called Life Worth Living, A Guide to What Matters Most. Miroslav Wolf, that's you, Matthew Krosman, and Ryan McNally-Lins are the three authors. Why does Yale have all these courses on happiness? There's that other woman, Lori Santos, who has a course on happiness too, which is very popular.

1:09:16What's up with Yale and Courses on Happiness? Well, you know, there's a distinction between two of our courses, very friendly terms with Laurie, and Laurie has endorsed the book. Yeah, she brought the back. Yeah, Laurie is asking a very important question that many of the Yale undergrads and most colleges that I know experience all the time. They find themselves inadequate to the task of living a life, a college life, as many people find themselves in life more generally. And they need resources and helps how to get from point A to point B. You have another course in Stanford course, Design Your Life.

1:10:02That's not from psychological standpoint, as Lori does her class, but from the standpoint of design, how do I design my life such that I can get from point A to point B? And I personally think both of these questions are really important. You have some to have some technical, quote unquote, skills in order to live well. You have at the same time to have some psychological skills, capacities in order to do so. Our course is different in that we don't ask the question, how do I get from point A to point B? We're asking the question, what point B is worth getting to? That's the central question of the whole book.

1:10:47They're not mutually exclusive alternatives. Both need to be there. But we feel that in the larger conversation, both in the broader culture and also in the university kinds of settings, that this question of the B, of what B is worth getting to, has been neglected. And this book tries to elevate that question to the forefront of our attention. Well, I love the book. It got me really thinking about a lot of these questions. Also, I encourage people to look at the sections in each chapter where, you know, almost the homework, like you asking these questions. So people just aren't passively reading.

1:11:31You have to answer these questions yourself as the reader as you read this book. And it's a very valuable book, such great stories, so many questions. It got me thinking and considering, you know, and I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and answering my questions to you about the book. But I also just love all the stories in the book and the people you mentioned and so on. So we only touched a little on that, but it is really great stories. So thank you. Thank you so much for having me. wonderful podcast that you have and it was just a pleasure talking to you thank you