Arthur C. Brooks offers two questions to uncover what gives your life meaning: Why are you alive? and What would you willingly die for right now? He says sustained reflection on these questions lets meaning surface, and his students report profound happiness when they sit with them.
Here's the meaning quiz. Question number 1, why are you alive? Now, that's not a question that you can Google. ChatGPT is gonna give you nothing if you put this one in. Why are you alive? Who created you? For what purpose? You gotta think about that. You gotta sit with that one. The second, for some people, is even harder. Why would you die right now voluntarily? For what would you give your life happily at this moment? Now, For those of you like me, and most of you are like me in the following way, you have an immediate answer, my kids. What else? For what else would you give your life? Would you give your life for your faith, for your church, for your country, for your values? That's what you gotta sit with because the more you sit with that question, the more meaning finds you. And when I look at my students actually grappling with these questions, it's like watching a flower open up. It's like watching a miracle of happiness find them vis-à-vis meaning.
