When I was 18, a mentor asked me three questions: “What is the good life? Who do you know who has it? How do you learn from them how to get there?” The answers to these are not universal, and in fact are expected to vary from person to person. But the questions themselves are a forcing function that directs the aim of the listener.
This entry is about my answer to the first question: “What is the good life?”
To arrive at the good life, I built on three core components: faith in God’s goodness (the why), a value for adventure (the what), and an approach of improvisation (the how).
I qualify faith as the persistent belief in God’s goodness, no matter the circumstances. Even in the darkest of times, it is faith to trust that God, who controls what we cannot control, is in fact, good. As Jordan Peterson would put it, that existence itself is worthwhile. This faith is perhaps the only true foundation for someone to continue to love others in the face of unspeakable tragedy just as they do in times of plenty. It is the foundation of the Christian faith: “we love, because He first loved us,” and out of it can flow the two great commandments: “love your God with every part of you,” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” God’s goodness, the acceptance of his nature as Love, drives all outlook and behavior.
If the nature of the all-powerful, all-knowing is good then, what is the nature of the world we live in? Among the many facets of an answer, I will focus on one: the size of the world is unbounded. By which I mean, the set that is our possible experiences is larger than we could ever comprehend, and immeasurably larger than what we could partake of. This is as true for a newborn as it is for a retiring executive with a midlife crisis. The world is huge, and every life is utterly unique. The potential remaining lives of any one person are infinite.
Because the set of possible lives available is always so great, it is foolish to try to optimize for some end goal within this set. Imagine lading in a new country, about which I knew nothing beyond my line of sight, and saying that I knew enough to determine the exact path I wanted to take while I was there.
Yes, I can invert away the worse paths that I’ve seen, and keep core building blocks that have lasted the test of millennia. But beyond that, the only option I can choose, is one of adventure. Of trying to live life in a way that is surprising to me, to explore the available paths without fear.
This is not a life without commitment, which would be a cheap life indeed. But it is a life of embracing the unexpected circumstances, of taking chances when they present themselves, and of rejecting fear as a driver of decisions. This is very difficult to do in a world governed by someone that is not good, which is why God’s goodness is so foundational. If the underlying foundation of the universe were not good, my goal would be survival, my driving emotion one of fear. Instead, I favor exploration, driven by curiosity. “Perfect love casts out all fear.”
One can live a life of adventure because faith in God includes faith in His provenance. He cares for the sparrows, so He will care for you. “Let tomorrow worry for itself.” You don’t need to store up treasures or orient your entire life around maximizing your retirement income (which is different from thinking and planning ahead, as dictated by wisdom). I refuse to live a sedentary life, because there is surely better out there, better than I could have imagined. And that better is known only to God. We are now comforted by God’s goodness, and curious. How does one then live this life of adventure?
A building block of improv is the concept of an offer. Simplified, an offer is when another actor on stage proposes a new element in the shared reality of your play. An offer cannot contradict older offers, and must always be accepted, lest you reject the premise of cooperative play that characterizes the art. For example, a scene may start with two players on a bench. As it is improv, nothing else is known (nor, at the beginning, true) to the audience nor the actors. Then, to start the scene, one benchwarmer will extend an offer to the other by saying something along the lines of, “aren’t you so-and-so from that so-and-so event?” The recipient player, who has obviously never heard that name nor that place before, must gladly accept the offer and grow the story accordingly.
The key point here is that the recipient player is always on the lookout for an offer, and needs to truly trust their fellow player(s) in order to be able to accept them easily (a bad offer can kill a fledgling story, a rejected offer can kill the mood). The more a player rejects offers, the fewer offers will be given to them by the other players. Offers are terrifying, because they are new, not entirely clear, and unplanned for. But it is precisely because they were not known, that improv is so fun (and entertaining).
So, if we “let tomorrow worry for itself,” we need only focus on the very next step. In every moment, all we have to do is consider the available options and discern which one brings the Kingdom closer. It is the improv of the Bible - look for offers when they come, and never, ever reject an offer. This is the how to the what of adventure.
Now, because I believe in a good God, I believe that any set of circumstances can still allow for a meaningful life (note that the adjective is meaningful, not easy nor happy). The set of actions available to a person at any given point in time, however, falls on a spectrum of wisdom: some actions are better than others. So, to be clear, I am not advocating a spontaneous approach of randomness to life. But rather, a focus on being wise only in the now. A life of adventure requires action, and lots of it. But those actions need to be taken well, prayerfully (if God is good, wouldn’t He want to give you guidance? And wouldn’t His guidance be good?), and purposefully.