Miroslav Volf: Life Worth Living

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Everything Happens Studios

Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What makes a good life? How would you answer that question? Not just life in the abstract… but what makes YOUR life good? Professor Miroslav Volf teaches a popular class at Yale University which guides students through these kinds of questions and might help us all think a little more deeply about what our lives are adding up to be. In this conversation, Kate and Miroslav discuss: Why just practicing the habits of a good life doesn’t make a life meaningful (hint: we need to be thinking about the ends) Importance of asking questions we don’t always have the answers to How to define joy What does flourishing look like when we feel like we’re “losing” How joy and suffering can coexist On a personal note, this is a special interview for Kate because Miroslav was also her professor at Yale and someone she looks up to with joy and admiration. *** Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here. Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here. Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What makes a good life?
0:04.0	How would you answer that question?
0:07.0	I'm not just in the abstract, but what makes your life good?
0:13.0	My name is Kate Boehler, and this is Everything Happens.
0:18.0	I'm a professor, and the stuff I get unbelievably obsessed about is really just thinking about
0:23.0	cultural scripts.
0:24.0	The stories we tell ourselves to explain our suffering or our successes or whatever
0:31.0	happens in between.
0:33.0	And mostly my days involve scouring the billion dollar American wellness industry
0:38.0	to think about how it tries to sell us one version of this story of best life now,
0:44.0	which as you can probably tell or probably already know, I don't buy into.
0:50.0	But there's just something about how we live that's really worth digging into here.
0:57.0	The choices that we make, the disciplines or habits that we foster, how do we get inside
1:03.0	of our realities and point it towards something meaningful?
1:08.0	So in other words, instead of like a super hyper agency, everything is possible.
1:14.0	Instead, we really are trying to think about how do we live toward a deep goodness
1:21.0	without optimizing or falling into those self-help sticky traps?
1:28.0	How do we try and practice trying without all of a sudden realizing that we're completing a 23-step skincare routine at night,
1:37.0	and not doing the big stuff like, hey, forgiving our sisters?
1:43.0	How do we find hope and joy and meaning inside of our actual lives within all of our actual limitations?
1:51.0	I wanted to ask someone that I love and respect about these deeper questions,
1:56.0	questions like, what makes a life meaningful, what makes a life worth living?
	...

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