Life Worth Living

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFinancial Times' "Best books of 2023 — Health & Wellness" "Life Worth Living is transcendent. A collection of wisdom punctuated by questions of great consequence, this is the only book you need to find your way from where you are to where you are called to be." --Kelly Corrigan, NYT bestselling author, host of Kelly Corrigan Wonders and PBS’s Tell Me MoreBased on the Yale class, a guide to defining and then creating a flourishing life, and answering one of life’s most pressing questions: how are we to live?AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVERWhat makes a good life? The question is inherent to the human condition, asked by people across generations, professions, and social classes, and addressed by all schools of philosophy and religions. This search for meaning, as Yale faculty Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz argue, is at the crux of a crisis that is facing Western culture, a crisis that, they propose, can be ameliorated by searching, in one’s own life, for the underlying truth. In Life Worth Living, named after its authors’ highly sought-after undergraduate course, Volf, Croasmun, and McAnnally-Linz chart out this question, providing readers with jumping-off points, road maps, and habits of reflection for figuring out where their lives hold meaning and where things need to change.Drawing from the major world religions and from impressively truthful and courageous secular figures, Life Worth Living is a guide to life’s most pressing question, the one asked of all of us: How are we to live?

CONTENTS Introduction: This Book Might Wreck Your Life xi   Part 1: Diving In ONE • What’s Worth Wanting? 3 TWO • Where Are We Starting From? 18 Part 2: The Depths THREE • Who Do We Answer To? 35 FOUR • How Does a Good Life Feel? 49 FIVE • What Should We Hope For? 62 SIX • How Should We Live? 77 Part 3: Bedrock SEVEN • The Recipe Test 105 EIGHT • The Really Big Picture 126 Part 4: Facing the Limits NINE • When We (Inevitably) Botch It  153 TEN • When Life Hurts . . . 172 ELEVEN •  . . . And There’s No Fixing It 187 TWELVE • When It Ends 207 Part 5: Back to the Surface THIRTEEN • It Turns Out We Have Some Work to Do 227 FOURTEEN • Change Is Hard 241 FIFTEEN • Making It Stick 259   Epilogue: What Matters Most 281 Acknowledgments 285 Notes 291