What Does a Life Well Lived Mean To You?

My four pillars

The Seine At Pont Saint-Michel, Maximilien Luce, 1900

I recently went to a dinner party here in Austin. The setup was cool. There were pleasant-smelling candles, a nice table cloth, and relaxing background music. There were seven people there in total, and the topic of the night was a question: What does a life well lived mean to you? This question led to hours of thoughtful conversation. I’ve been reflecting on the night, and I want to share with you, dear reader, what I said. Some of the details I did not say during the dinner, because I thought of them when I sat down to write this essay.

It’s worth noting I am relatively young—twenty-three—and do not have it all figured out. The good news is that no one ever figures it all out. But I do have a certain conviction about the path that I am on. This path is guided by four basic pillars that I believe lead to living life well.

The first is that you make stuff. If you don’t create anything, you miss out on a core part of being human. We are meant to make things. Whatever “it” is. Whether you write, paint, draw, sculpt, make videos, record podcasts, or build a business, it doesn’t matter. Bringing an idea from your mind into reality is inherently fulfilling. The pride and satisfaction that comes from the creative act is the sweetest drug.

The second is that you seek truth. I told this story recently, but it is worth repeating. During the height of the pandemic, I investigated some journals my dad has always kept. There are three of them, one for each of his sons. They always sat on the counter between two couches in the living room. Despite seeing them every day, I realized I had never read them before. I started with the journals of my brothers, laughing out loud in admiration. When I reached mine, one of the earliest lines read: “Jeffrey asks more questions than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.” I laughed again, because it is true. I hold no illusions about the idea of legacy. I view it as a bit of a foolish concept. But if you’ll let me to indulge the idea for a moment, let me say that if I were to have a legacy, it would be as a guy who was genuinely trying to figure out what was going on.

The third is that you have fun. In general, if you are not having fun, you are missing the point. You could be the most successful person by any measure, but if you did not have any fun, you lost. You might say, well, certain people do not have time for fun, or how they lived was so hard it could not have been fun. They sacrificed. You are likely right in many cases. But that also depends on how you define fun. I’ve found this is almost always a personal definition, one that often includes sacrificing and doing hard things. So I guess the more important thing is to know your personal definition. It is surprising how many people don’t, and these are likely the same people who don’t have that much fun.

Fourth, and by far the biggest pillar, is love. Love is the most important thing in the world. It’s that simple. There’s a scene from the movie Bleed For This where the main character, a champion boxer, is being interviewed. The reporter asks, “What is the biggest lie you were ever told?” He says it is not that simple, prompting the reporter to ask why not. “No, that’s the biggest lie I was ever told. It’s not that simple. That’s the lie they tell you over and over again.” That is how I feel about love being the most important thing. It’s also how I feel about these four pillars being essential to a life well lived.

It’s that simple.