I was recently at a conference that required me to spend time commuting by train. One day, I noticed a strange thing: a young man reading a book. With a cover and pages and everything.
The bare fact of this fascinated me. Who reads books anymore?
Almost everyone else was either staring at their phones or talking (loudly and obliviously) into phones held in front of their mouths on speaker mode, as seems the new, bewildering norm.
But there he sat, reading his book, like some kind of fossil from a bygone age. I glanced at the cover. The Art of Living by Epictetus. Well. Not just any old book—which would have been remarkable enough—but a book of ancient philosophy and virtue. My mind was well and truly blown. I wanted to lean over and congratulate him or give him a hug or something.
I looked around the train. A girl stared out a window, looking lonely. An advertisement behind her asked: “Is cake better than sex?” The guy beside me was using his phone as a mirror, adjusting and readjusting his hair.
Almost everyone else was walled off from the world, cloistered away by headphones and gadgetry.
When the young man reading Epictetus got off the train, I watched him walk away and wondered, Are any of us living well?
How many of us believe that living well in the world is an art? That how we choose to live our lives is worth thinking deeply about? That there are better and worse ways to spend our days? That something might be required of us and that such a something might originate outside of ourselves?
Even for those of us who may be convinced, it is easy to allow the grim tides of consumerism and entertainment, apathy and TikTok to wash over us, conditioning us to imagine that life is little more than the passive consumption of digital content.
A few days prior, I had attended a lecture on models of Old Testament interpretation. At one point I glanced at an older man a few rows in front of me who kept folding and unfolding his hands. I wondered why, until I noticed a tremor in one of his hands. When it started to shake, he would use his other hand to gently massage it back into temporary compliance. My heart felt heavy. Was it Parkinson’s? I have seen people endure this wretched disease, some for long periods of time. I know of the various ways it comes, like a thief, to steal, kill and destroy. I prayed that it was something else, that this terrible disease was not in this guy’s life. But the sense of heaviness remained.
I wondered: If I were thus afflicted, would I be attending a public lecture on Old Testament interpretation? My strong suspicion is that I would not. But then, I am not always a very artful liver.
Perhaps this gentleman was seeking better tools to discern the methods of the wild God of the pages of the Old Testament, the God of Job and Jonah, Samuel and Solomon, David and Daniel, the God who baffles and demands, who forms light and creates darkness, who brings both weal and woe. Perhaps his attendance at the lecture was an act of defiance or an expression of devotion to the God who made him, the God who would accompany him through whatever trials lay ahead. Maybe he believed that living (and suffering) well was an art, that even terrible things can invite us into deeper communion with the suffering God.
Ryan Dueck serves as pastor of Lethbridge (Alberta) Mennonite Church. He can be reached at ryanduecklmc@gmail.com.
Audit – Cindy Wallace
I’m teaching a seminar on social justice and the common good this term, and we’ve been thinking about this question a lot: What does it mean to live well?
What is a good life?
Ryan suggests that living well involves intentionality—perhaps reading Stoic philosophy, perhaps attending public lectures on the Scriptures, perhaps something else, but choosing to seek wisdom.
I seek this wisdom with my students: What have others said about living well? What do we believe a life well-lived looks like? Can we surface our assumptions and clarify our longings, then compare them to our culture’s pressures of distraction and a certain inattentive ease?
The next step is a kind of life audit. In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard reminds us, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”So what are we doing? Where are our hours going? How about our attention? Do these hours—does this life—align with our deepest commitments? What would it look like to shift our moments and our days into a fuller and more freely chosen practice of goodness, in its many forms?
Cindy Wallace is professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan.
Receive – Justin Sun
‘Everything happens for a reason’ is no reason not to ask myself if I am living it right” is a line from a favourite song that hit me in the gut… at 17 years old.
From childhood, I have struggled with the sense that I am not walking the right path or living artfully. If anything, I have lived my life overly attentive (anxious) and perpetually feeling there is a good life I am failing to live up to.
When I was younger, I dreaded the prospect of never finding a great purpose or impactful career. Today, though I have expanded beyond notions of career, the dread still eats at me. How am I to spend my hours and days?
Lately, I have been trying to turn that off a bit. I still care about living well, but I am trying to focus less on questions of doing and more on questions like: How am I grateful today? Who cares for me? Who do I care for? Who am I becoming?
In a world of gadgetry, consumerism and inattentive ease, maybe to live well is to remember, first and foremost, that life is a gift to receive.
The rest might follow.
Justin Sun is a student at Vancouver School of Theology/Vancouver Coastal Health.
Suffer – Anika Reynar
I sit at my dad’s bedside, reading Ryan’s column aloud. This has become a ritual—sharing what I’m reading and writing. My dad’s long struggle with chronic pain has intensified. For the last two years, he’s barely left his bed.
By some measures, his quality of life is low. Yet, when I think of the art of living well, I think of my dad. He reminds me that living well in suffering requires first practicing the art of living in times of goodness.
We create communities of belonging by practicing mutual care. We cultivate wisdom by following our deepest questions. We learn to see beauty by delighting in the small, in-between moments.
These practices are easier in times of health. In times of suffering, they become essential for survival.
I watch the steady stream of friends visiting my dad. They arrive, knowing these bedside conversations are spaces of mutual care. Friends witness both his suffering and curiosity, while he offers attention to their stories of beauty, exploration and struggle.
These conversations are a practice in living well—a determined resistance to the isolation that suffering can create, and an invitation into communion with the God who sustains and suffers with us.
Anika Reynar works in Boston as a facilitator and mediator in environmental disputes.
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