The University Record recently asked What Makes Life Worth Living: http://ur.umich.edu/1011/Sep20_10/1512-question-of-the
A theme semester on “What Makes Life Worth Living?” runs the risk of seeming so absorbed with abstract, eternal, and universal questions (What is the good life? What is our nature as humans? What is the nature of happiness?) that connections with concrete, here-and-now things that make life worth living on a daily basis will get overshadowed.
That would be unfortunate, since what makes life worth living is often local … richly so. Thinking of the concrete daily experiences and events that make your own life worthwhile is an important exercise, one that will allow you to know if you are on your way to a worthwhile life. For, as Annie Dillard (The Writing Life) notes: “How we spend our days, is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
To stimulate your thinking about things that make life worth living for you, below is a brief clip from Woody Allen’s film Manhattan in which he tackles this question. We would like to hear from you about your list. You can either post a comment below, or upload a video to YouTube of yourself stretched out on your couch—a la Woody Allen—telling us what’s on your list and email it to us at ethics@umich.edu.
Every week or so we’ll pick some names from the list of people who have responded and send them one of the theme semester t-shirts, giving them the opportunity to show folks around them what makes life worth living for them.
Here’s Woody Allen’s take on What Makes Life Worth Living:
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Let us know what you think below!
