A Dozen Big Questions, Plus Two
The course that was the inspiration for this site covers a wide range of big questions, beginning with two that follow us all year:
WHO SHOULD I BE AND WHAT SHOULD I DO?
These two questions that frame our conversations come from the subtitle of a book by Schwehn and Bass titled, Leading Lives That Matter. The book covers a broad range of topics and authors, and yet it's just one of the sources we work from as we think and explore. While there are plenty of individual questions covered (by each individual), the overarching questions we work with both in class and here on the site are:
Who and what are we?
What do we want?
What gives life meaning/significance?
What makes life satisfying or even fulfilling?
What makes us happy?
What is success?
What is the role of work in life?
What is my passion...(if I have one)?
What's the role of relationships/other people in life?
How do I create a balanced life?
What kind of life do I want to look back on?
What does it mean to be "present" in life?
There are more, of course. Lots more. But there's only so much time. On this site, we'll take them on as they occur to us, a little at a time. Along the way, to help keep our thinking organized and searchable, we use...tags.
Wayfinding (with tags) through the Life Philosophy Project
We considered organizing the Life Philosophy Project a lot of different ways, but since there’s a fairly large group contributing at least occasionally to this site, we opted to rely primarily on blog posts and tags to allow you to work your way through the things that interest you.
Of course, you’re welcome to simply read the entries that catch your eye, or if you’re interested in particular topics (finding meaning in life, happiness, fulfillment, life and death…), click on the tag and it’ll pull together all the posts we think are relevant. This is a growing site, so watch for new posts to pop up as they occur to us.
We’ve provided short definitions for each of the tags and quick-links below. There are so many “big questions” in life, we can’t possibly cover them all. But these are the ones we think most people struggle with… Click away!
Tags (and what we mean by them)
We have used these (clickable) tags in our blog posts:
Choices - Life is full of options and possibilities. How do you choose?
Connections - Networking, serendipity, family, acquaintances... The people around us are central elements in our life stories
Faith & Ideology - Exploring life's big questions inevitably means facing what we believe
Flow - The state of being completely lost in something you're doing
Fulfillment - (The state we all wish we were feeling!) That sense that we are exactly where we're supposed to be, doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing.
Happiness - What does it mean to be "happy"? (Chocolate cake!)
Identity - Who am I, and why am I like this?
Life and Death - Some of our biggest questions relate to the ways we live and die
Life Balance - Usually, people think work-life balance, but there are all kinds of ways for our lives to be in or out of balance
Meaning - What is it to lead a meaningful life? What gives life its meaning?
Motivation - What turns your crank and keeps it turning?
Passion - Is there something that consumes you, calls you? (What if there isn't?)
Presence - Being right here, right now...
Rearview Mirror - At some point, if we live long enough, we all spend time looking back. What do you hope to see when it's you looking at life in the rearview mirror?
Relationships - Those things that bring us our greatest joys and the deepest frustrations
Significance - How much do I matter, and does that matter?
Success - How do I define "achievement" or "accomplishment"? How do I know I'm "there"?
Work/Career - What is work? What is it to me? How do I find "good work"?
Living the Questions...
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
(Ranier Maria Rilke)