important life questions

Important life questions: Readers respond

donaeley1 Comment

We asked you to offer up hard questions designed to uncover what we are really about. They spanned the range from the eternal to the minute-to-minute.

Earlier, we (my husband, David, and I) wrote a post about questions we should ask ourselves but don’t.  The reasons we do not ask these questions vary; they could be busyness, belief we will live forever, or simply just a lack of humility.  Whatever the reasons, we need to stop occasionally and ask ourselves those hard questions about what we are about. These questions fall between the philosophical, ultimate questions (Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?) and the important everyday questions (Which car should I buy? Why is my relationship with my teenager so difficult?). 

We asked you to offer up your questions and – WOW – you did.  As we reviewed the questions, we saw certain categories (essential/ultimate, self-assessment, relationships, change-agent, worry/anxiety) and grouped them accordingly.  These categories, by themselves, are worth thinking about.

So, here they are.   Personally, I (David) am going to take up a notebook and try to journal through them over the next several weeks.

Thank you, reader-thinkers, for contributing.

Life’s essential, ultimate questions: 

We call these the 1st order questions.  We noticed several of you could not pass by these.  Note the comment on the second bullet…..

  • Who am I? Why am I alive now?
  • Where will I spend eternity?  As one responder noted, “It is only with this settled that I feel I have the correct perspective to look on this present life and to be able to respond to James 1:2, to “consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds.”
  • How and why was the universe created?

If we live in the universe, are we not aliens just living on our home planet?

Self-assessment and self-awareness questions:

  • What is my greatest pleasure in life and is it appropriate?
  • Am I longing for life in the New Heaven and Earth with God, or am I too content to pursue a comfortable life now?
  • Quick, without reflection or over-thinking, who are my idols?
  • If I wrote a letter to the Younger Me, what would I say?  (If you’re between 18 – 34 years old write your letter to a ~16-year-old you. If you’re 35 or older, write your letter to a ~20 – 30-year-old you.) 
  • To whom am I looking for my deepest satisfaction?  Is that working?
  • What baggage am I carrying that I don’t need because it steals my joy?
  • Am I action-oriented, or reaction-oriented?
  • What am I pretending not to know?
  • Am I doubting my doubts?  Or, has my skepticism run full-circle?
  • Am I content with my financial situation? If the answer is “no’” then the next questions might be, Will my concerns about my financial situation be important 10 years from now? (They might.) Or, what are my concerns about my financial situation telling me about my relationships, fears, priorities, self-image?
  • Is my identity in Christ and not my occupation, bank account, status?
  • What deeper questions are my emotions raising?  (We need to listen to our emotions; not obey them, not deny them.  Listen for the questions of the soul they are raising.  Am I angry?  Why am I angry?)
  • Related to the question above, one responder offered this question-to-next-question process:
    1. What emotions am I experiencing?
    2. Dig deeper: what am I really feeling? (Check out the comprehensive feelings-wheel here.  Very helpful.)
    3. What is prompting me to feel that way?
    4. Why does it make me feel that way?
    5. What does that say about my desires? …relationships? …commitments? …expectations?
    6. What does God think about this?
    7. What should I do in response?

Which came first, the chicken-salad sandwich or the egg-salad sandwich?

Daily review questions:

  • When I think of my first and last thoughts of the day, am I pleased with those thoughts?
  • What did I do today that was eternal?
  • What was my end goal in my parenting/grandparenting today?
  • Did I point anyone toward God today?
  • Have I moved into the opportunity to share my faith (the hope that I have) authentically, with gentleness and respect for the hearer?  1 Peter 3:15
  • Should I put my device down and make pancakes for breakfast?

Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?

Relationship questions, both with God and others:

  • Do I need to be forgiven?  Am I forgiven?  How do I know I am forgiven?
  • How am I doing supporting those closest to me?  Is there anything I can do this week to better support them?
  • What was my end goal in my parenting/grandparenting today?
  • What do I hope the end result of this conversation to be?  What space can I make for God in this conversation?  Am I expecting God to show up on this conversation – to change both him/her and me? 
  • Thinking about the parable of the Good Samaritan, who are the people in my life I feel too important to help in their need?  (These could be people I don’t like, people who don’t like me (imagine that) and people who probably will never be able to give anything more than a thank you.  They can be people whose religious and cultural backgrounds are different than mine.  Maybe their language is different, their values different…..people I have to make an effort to enter into their world.)
  • What difference will my life have made in those I love?
  • Are there broken or unhealthy relationships (spouse, family, friends) that are within my power to mend?  As another respondent put it:  What relationships do I need to ask or give forgiveness?
  • Have I passed up an opportunity to tell someone I love them?  To whom do I need to say, “I love you”?

Looking towards the months or years ahead:

  • What does God want me to know or experience before I die?  What has God told me to do that I have not done?
  • What should I risk doing with whatever years I have left?
  • What is the thing I am most afraid of?  (It seems to me that to identify and name it is the first step towards taking away its power over us.)  If I was not scared what would I do? 

Do I have a signature dance move? Why not?

Questions for making changes in 2021, or any year:

  • What are the spiritual disciplines I need to cultivate to keep me connected to God?
  • What are the practices of self-care I need to attend to my body and nurture my soul?
  • What core relationships do I need to support me on my journey?
  • What are the gifts, passions, and burdens within me that God wants me to express for the blessing of others?

Questions dealing with worry and anxiety:

  • Will it matter in 10-20 years?
  • If you were dying would you worry about this? 
  • How important will this be in 100 years?  (The responder noted that this is similar to another question above but “making sure that I will be dead before I reflect on this so that it is not just the older self looking back but the one who has now entered into eternity.”)
  • Does __________ really matter?  (Insert anything, relationship, situation, worry, anxiety-maker into that sentence.)  But, does ___________ REALLY matter?

End of Life (or Anytime) Issues: Questions We Don’t Ask Ourselves

donaeley16 Comments

Summary: The hard questions of life fall between the philosophical 1st-order questions (Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?) and the important everyday questions (Which car should I buy? Why is my relationship with my teenager so difficult?). In this post we list five of the ‘hard’ questions.

Note:  This post is a companion piece to my last post.  My husband, David, and I have written it together. 

Warning:  We expect a reaction to this post.  It will be so much better if you contribute to it.  See our request at the end.

(Dave) When my father was in his eighties I asked him how he approached the end of life. A bold, may be even insensitive question which he took well. Jasper’s response was succinct, immensely practical, and somewhat fatalistic.

“I’ll hang on till something happens.”

(Dona) But years later, when we had our last conversation, he was more reflective, hopeful, and life affirming. He asked me, “Why have I lived so long?” His conclusion? To learn gratitude.

“The un-examined life is not worth living.”

Socrates

“I am a living paradox — deeply religious, yet not as convinced of my exact beliefs as I ought to be; wanting responsibility yet shirking it; loving the truth but often giving way to falsity. . . . I detest selfishness but see it in the mirror every day.”

Bill Clinton (written when a teenager)1

“So, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

Psalm 90:12

(Dave)  For 25 years, Richard Leider interviewed more than 1,000 senior citizens, asking them to look back over their lives and talk about what they have learned. These seniors were successful in their jobs, having retired from leading companies after distinguished careers.

Leider writes, “Almost without exception, when these older people look back, they say the same things – things that are instructive and useful for the rest of us as we make decisions going forward in our lives.

First, they say that if they could live their lives over again, they would be more reflective. They got so caught up in the doing, they say, that they often lost sight of the meaning. Usually, it took a crisis for them to look at their lives in perspective and try to reestablish the context. Looking back, they wish they had stopped at regular intervals to look at the big picture.”

(Dona) Facing mortality or a deep crisis can set the stage for questioning the meaning of life, build depth in spiritual reflection and self-examination.

In a recent article for TIME, Jamie Ducharme reports that “the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have spurred a collective reckoning with our values, lifestyles and goals—a national existential crisis of sorts.”

Why don’t we stop and look at the big picture before we face a life-threatening event or realize we have well-exceeded a normal lifespan? Is it Leider’s seniors, who got too caught up in the doing to catch the meaning? Or, another reason, which I wrote about in an earlier post: ‘mythical immortality’; the belief that other people die, I don’t.

Whatever the reason: busyness, belief we will live forever, or simply just a lack of humility, we need to stop occasionally and ask ourselves those hard questions about what we are about. So, we (Dona and Dave) have drawn up a list of life questions, the questions we don’t ask ourselves but should. These questions fall between the philosophical 1st-order questions (Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?) and the important everyday questions (Which car should I buy? Why is my relationship with my teenager so difficult?).

Here are our top five, but we want to hear from you, too. 

  1. (Dona) First on my list would be the question my father-in-law asked me two weeks before he passed, “Why have I lived so long?” Notice, again, that he had moved from just “hanging on till something happens”, to asking, essentially, “What does God want you to know or experience before you die?” And, of course, this is a question for any age; the earlier the better.
  2. (Dave) What are you pretending not to know? I love this question posed to Jason Nazar. He writes, “This was perhaps the most powerful question I was ever asked (by my best friend). All possibilities open up when we stop deceiving ourselves.” When we get really serious about this question then we start asking really serious questions about the meaning and purpose of life. The corollary question is, “Are you doubting your doubts?” For example, if I doubt God exists, have I seriously examined that doubt or am I just using ‘doubt’ to sidestep or avoid the hard work of researching and facing the issue head-on?
  3. (Dave) Are there broken or unhealthy relationships (spouse, family, friends) that are within your power to mend? This is my least favorite question. Easy to answer, difficult to act on because of the risk. But many books written, and movies produced around this theme testify to its importance.
  4. (Dona) If you were dying would you worry about this? I devoted a post to this two years ago when I learned my cancer had spread. When I thought I would live forever everything mattered; from the inanest to the most profound. There’s little wiggle room to separate out the important opinions and worries from the trite.
  5. (Dave) If you were not scared what would you do? (Another question from Jason Nazar.) “Use the rocking chair test. What would your 90-year-old self, looking back on your own life, advise you to do in the moment?” We are not talking about bungee-cord diving here. (Although if you want a little levity then check out the video below of fearless grandmas taking great risk.) Referring back to Leider’s interview with seniors, he found they would, first, be more reflective, and second, take more risks. My father told me late in life that he wished he had not been afraid to take risks in pursuing some of his entrepreneurial ideas….in other words, spend more time at the office, not less. I am so grateful for all the time my dad spent away from the office and with me when I was young, but I got the point. Is there an opportunity out there waiting that requires effort and risk to pursue? I have a close friend who at 72 spends much of his waking hours developing entrepreneurial programs at a charity providing work readiness training in under-served neighborhoods. The effort great and there is risk, but the reward is great. That is life.

Grandmas taking risks!!

Okay, it is your turn. Please share some of your life reflection questions in the comment bar or send me an email donaeley907@gmail.com .

Footnote 1: Bill Clinton wrote this reflection for an essay in high school. Regardless of what you think of the 42nd president, this is a pretty unflinching look in the mirror for a teenager.