The Search for a Life Well Lived

Write Well, Speak Well, Think Well

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Completing a good education, we are told, must be the main goal for everyone under the age of 22. We can easily believe the lie that getting a good education is just a matter of ticking boxes, formatting a transcript, and getting into a “good” school at a price we are willing to pay. We look forward to college tours and narrowing down the list of possible majors in college only to repeat the process, albeit at more expense for four more years. Walking the college graduation stage means we’ve done it and “off we go” to obtain that career we’ve chosen or a seat in a graduate program where we repeat that check list a third time. Is this a good education? Will this give us a life well lived?

The opportunity to seek gainful employment after each level in this process passes the vaguely defined notion of a “good” education today. Soon, nobody cares if you made top scores in high school but watch for highest marks in college and then beyond. When is the goal reached? Eventually, most who have ostensibly obtained a good education wonder if life is more than earning institutional certification to continue to work hard.

Eventually we must all think about life as more than keeping a decent job with good prospects for promotion. This can cause a little confusion. The main impetus that occupied our first twenty-two or more years fades quickly as we “finish” our education. Is this it? Now what? We can presumably pay bills now but how do we go beyond that to have a good life? How do we discover the most direct path to that goal?

Defining a “good” life is the real riddle. It has been the subject of much philosophy and theology stretching as far back as we have written records. By comparison, choosing and then training for employment is easy. Keeping a job and becoming successful in that job is practically a no-brainer even though we use a quarter of our life on that one thing. Having and enjoying a good life is a profound mystery that few people solve to complete satisfaction having, in their view, run out of time before they “arrive” at that destination. Advice is mainly ignored by each new generation as though earlier ages didn’t quite work out the answers properly enough for their modern tastes.

A good life is subject to individual definition after decades of living with or rejecting different modes. Each person must evaluate where to place energy and passion. Some stay forever focused on the pursuit of good looks and good money. Others prefer slower investments that yield life-long relationships and a support system of friends and family. Others prefer intellectual challenges and are happy with a good library, garden, and book.

How Do We Live Life Well?

My deepest apologies for my inability to summarize a well-lived life in this short blog. I wish all of you many productive hours searching for this answer in trusted, wise, and virtuous sources as well as novel ideas (as each generation prefers). Instead, I suggest three basic skills that will help you the most in your search. They aren’t the absolute secret to a life well lived but they are the best tools to pack for that journey: learn how to write well, speak well, and think well.

Write Well

The main thing that prevents people from expertly expressing themselves in creative writing or formal academic writing is inexperience. Usually, they’ve been asked to play a complicated game but are never taught the rules. Some trendy pedagogical approaches today insist there are no rules! Write whatever comes to mind! You tell your truth! Such writers quickly discover there are rules to be followed and good examples to emulate if one hopes that other human beings will be interested in what they have to say.
Many students miss the most basic fact, namely that writing is meant to convey meaning to others so that they not only understand you but might even come to agree with you. How does this apply to a life well lived?

Long before there were pricey college degrees and peer reviewed journals, there was The Great Conversation, the exchange of ideas that has been going on for thousands of years that have to do with God, relationships, truth, knowledge, life, hope, despair, and how we must live. Every great thinker, writer, and doer of deeds not only consumes materials written on these topics but also takes part in the conversation about those subjects. Nothing is new under the sun. No fresh idea is truly fresh. Ideas have been in refinement for as long as people have written words and thought thoughts.
If you want to earn the highest academic accolades or learn how to fix small engines, being able to communicate in written form is a top tool for a life lived well.

Speak Well

The other day I was having a friendly conversation with a friend who runs a humble country greenhouse. He has never considered himself well educated since he set foot neither in college nor any formal classroom. He easily discusses thoughts on a wide variety of topics and speaks skillfully. He would be as comfortable in a boardroom, lecture hall, or a greenhouse full of tomato plants chatting with a customer. He enjoys the close support of family and community, and the competent success of all his efforts is easy to see. He is enjoying a life well lived! His ability to speak at ease with anyone and everyone on all subjects is as useful a tool in a greenhouse or at a campfire in the Rockies while he serves as a hunting guide. His clients range from adventurous millionaires to widows on a fixed income looking for garden advice.

Learning to confidently and boldly speak to others is a worthy tool for the job of building your own meaningful life. Just like there are rules and correct approaches to writing, verbal communication also has rules. The aim is to fully understand those rules and integrate them with such polish and practice that both tasks come quickly and easily to you. There are classes like rhetoric to help you learn how to overcome the fear of public speaking, attract interested listeners, and persuade them that you have clever ideas. The best success in speaking well is by doing more of it.

Think Well

Humans get so busy working on what they must think that they never master how to think skillfully. Expert use of one’s brain incorporates the ability to evaluate, study, memorize, and master new concepts without the need to have others teach that material to you or at least being judicious about the help you do need. People who know they can learn anything with a bit of perspiration and persistence, do. Not only are such people seldom bored, but the richness of their life compounds yearly, monthly, and daily. Their words are interesting to read or hear because they love to learn new things. They need no permission and seek few accolades, but their lives get richer daily. Those that can think well do so because they’ve given themselves the ability to learn new things, the humility to recalibrate when corrections must be made, and the confidence to employ their brains well, even without lofty credentials and costly degrees. 

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; refusing to set aside trivial preferences; neglecting development and refinement of the mind; attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero