Jarring Questions to Help Us Really Live

How a tragedy, a hurricane, a diagnosis jars us to live more deeply!

“What would you do today if you knew you might die tomorrow?

—St. Francis in his Letter to the Faithful

Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash

There’s nothing like a natural disaster to make a person re-think their life.  As I drive around Western North Carolina helping friends and strangers, so much of what people once thought was their normal life is now changed forever.  Houses damaged or gone; loved ones hurt or gone; a thickness of mud and grime on nearly everything—changes us—changes everything!

It doesn’t take a natural disaster though to jar some of us in to turning things around.  An accident or near-accident wakes us up; so does a diagnosis delivered from a medical test; so does getting scammed or losing one’s bet in a gamble. What’s it going to take to wake us up as a country? What’s it going to take to wake us up?

Being jarred into turning things around begins with facing five questions. These five questions steer even the deepest drafted boats to turn around—to turn from one course or destination to another.

1.     What are you living for?

2.     What is keeping you from living for what you just said?

3.     What would it look like for you to live more deeply?

4.     What would it look like for you to live more simply?

5.     What would it be like for you to live with the end in mind?

These five questions, when reflected upon and shared with a few friends, could help you not only survive—more move more fully into a season of life that could be marked by thriving—not just surviving.

Let me explain.

Question #1, gets at your reason to live—what is your life’s purpose or reason to be alive?  It’s not an easy sentence to write out. It will require some thought and reflection. Perhaps, even prayer.  This is a question that shifts with our decades and seasons of life that we are experiencing.

Question #2 is one that invites us to see specific roadblocks or barriers that are preventing us from moving forward. So many roads are impassable here in Western North Carolina following Hurricane Helene because so much flooding happened.  We wanted to go see our son’s family, about an hour away— but we had to turn around three different times because something got in our way—a fallen tree; a washed out section of the road; downed power-lines. What is “in” your way? What’s preventing you from the living how you want and need and have to live?

It could be an unresolved conflict—something internal—someone that interfered with your dream or destination.

Question #3 is about choosing to life a life of meaning. The abundant life we have heard so much about in our church life is not a life marked by long years. It is marked by awareness, intimacy, connection and consolation. To live more deeply is to move away from the shallow end of the pool and to feel the tug to live more deeply in the waters of mystery, hope and soul satisfaction.

Question #4 is a question that we always need to be asking ourselves. A wake up call; a tragedy; a near miss in life, will awaken us most likely to living with more simplicity.  Someone has said, I want to live more simply so that others may simply live.   I like that mantra as a gauge of how I want to live these days. It really is the simply things we need to live: shelter, water, a few deep hearted connections; a place where love abound.  Our son’s family in Tampa is having to evacuated right now because of a new Hurricane now headed to Tampa, Florida.

Lord, have mercy.

They loaded up their car and headed out and away from harms away. What would you take if you could only take one suitcase and fill one trunk in a car?  What could simplicity look like for you in the next few months as a goal of how you want to live?

You’ve heard it said, “You can’t take “it” with you”—and by that they mean, we have to lay down our stock portfolios, our music, our books, our art, and on and on. What is you could only take what your two hands could hold. Would it be a person or an object? Surely, you know the answer to this already.

Question #5 is one that I think is really important. Live now, with the end in mind.  It was Benedict, in the 5^th century that taught his followers to live with their death in mind every, single day.  It was a value he instilled to help people live clean; live lightly and live with the values of Eternity beating inside their chests.  When one lives this way, you want to resolve conflict quickly; keep short accounts; forgive lavishly and love deeply from the heart. Not a bad way to live, is it?

To be a Benedictine Monk, one most actually have a service where you are “laid out” —a funeral pal is drapped over your body. It symbolizes that you have died to yourself. It really is a wonderful way to live, though it is counter-cultural and often, counter-intuitive. What if we did that on Instragram? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

To live with the end in mind requires a shift; a cadence and renewed vow to begin each day of your life living for what really matters.

This and perhaps, only this, will help us simplify our lives; relinquish what is not essential and to discover that a life of meaning and purpose is one where the genesis is in the human heart—that place of great and grand encounter with the Life that is beyond us now.

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Why don’t you consider printing this out; calling up a friend and discussing this over coffee, lunch or a walk in the woods. But honestly, I’d so love it if you’d leave an answer to one of these questions so we can track and encourage each other onward and upward!