Integration Three 3 March 2022 Moreau No Matter No Distance, It’s The Ride Yes, the process of writing your own eulogy is a macabre and difficult thing to do. By nature, a eulogy is a document that’s supposed to narrate the entirety of your essence in life. All of your feelings, your thoughts, actions, and relationships. What’s key to the idea of a eulogy, however, is that it’s told through the lens of the people who you interact with and who you presume know you best—you don’t get to tell it yourself. Knowing that, the exercise of thinking about what your eulogy would entail is a painful process, because it forces you to consider the parts of yourself you’re not showing to the world. It forces you to ask the question: “if I died today, what would they say?”. And it forces you to scrutinize your actions in the here and now. That’s what makes this difficult. To remove the anguish—which is sometimes a necessary feeling—from the exercise of contemplating what your eulogy would read, you can analogize the document to a strong analysis of what a life well lived would look like. So what do I think a life well-lived looks like? I’d like to imagine that, when I look back at this essay in 30+ years from now, I’ll laugh at what I’ve written—who am I to say what a life well-lived looks like when I’ve only lived for roughly a fourth of my life? How should I know what will bring me fulfillment once I’m in the later years of my life? I'm normally resistant to the pattern of treating my future self with a sense of “otherness” which implies that my current self has little to no control over the person I’ll be in the future. After all, the person I envision myself becoming in the future is directly and intrinsically related to the person I am now. The “best, future” version myself isn’t someone else. It’s still me. With that, I try to live my life daily knowing that a changed version of myself doesn’t come without…change. So therefore, we must be able to define a well-lived life in terms of where we are right now, not in some distant future. This can be a tall order to ask of college students, whose lives can often be filled with stress, which “the World Health Organization has been widely quoted as stating ‘will be the health epidemic of the twenty-first century.’” (TED, “Why we need to slow down our lives”, Moreau FYE Week One). So, paradoxically, I’ve set out to do the following: study hard, perform well, launch a career, keep stress levels low, be a good person, and somehow be able to pursue a life well-lived in the here-and-now. How can this be justified? I think it’s all about framing. As a young, first-semester freshman, I thought that I had to make a bunch of changes in my life in order to be happy. Between the ending of my senior year of high school and the beginning of college, I was able to adequately identify that I was becoming a very unhappy person—far from living the good life. So I began to look for the solution to this unhappiness. Spoiler alert: I didn’t figure it all the way out. But now I think I have an idea. I think it has something to do with framing. There are moments when a life well-lived seems like something so elusive that it was never even meant for me. Moments when I feel unworthy of love, companionship, and contentment. I’m really good at being my own worst enemy. I think this places a huge barrier on living a good life. In one of my favorite songs, “Fare Thee Well”, Marcus Mumford writes that “Life ain’t worth living https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ without the one you love.” Aristotle made the same argument about friends being a necessity to achieve ultimate happiness. Fr. Ted Hesburgh (who inarguably lived a good life) was said to be a “bridge builder between people and God and among people.” (Narrator, “Hesburgh”, Moreau FYE Week Two). Simply put, a life well-lived involves other people. So when I tell myself otherwise, the good life seems impossible. I’m not sure why I can sometimes slip into the mindset that I’m unworthy of friendship, but when that mindset fades, I feel like I’m living well. When I can change my frame of mind into a more hopeful place, I begin to feel a well-lived life taking hold. For that reason, I’m a fan of the method of turning away from the “why” questions and choosing to ask “What am I feeling right now?” (Tasha Eurich, “The Right Way to be Introspective”, Moreau FYE Week Six) It’s about framing. I think that a life well-lived would be characterized by less self-resentment and more acceptance of the person that I am. Another large barrier to happiness in my life and in the lives of many college students has much to do with the question of what I’m doing with my professional life. I think I’m similar to many others when I say that I have no idea what I’ll do with my degree. This can often cause a lot of anxiety and prevent me from living in the present (a tenet which I believe is integral to living well). Once again, though, I think this problem is solved by framing. Though I struggle with accepting this idea, I like the notion that “There is no “best major” out there - but there is a “best major for you." (Meruelo CCD, “Navigating Your Career Journey” Moreau FYE Week Four). Additionally, when I can remove the mindset that not knowing what I’ll do professionally is a scary thing and turn to the mindset which recognizes that having professional flexibility is a special thing, I begin to https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=10159379-7eca-4549-8581-ab9500c9ecd9 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/41005/modules#:~:text=External%20Url-,Text%3A%20%E2%80%9CThe%20Right%20Way%20to%20be%20Introspective%20(Yes%2C%20There%E2%80%99s%20a%20Wrong%20Way)%E2%80%9D%20(Tasha%20Eurich%2C%20TED%20Conferences),-Activity%3A%20Complete%20One https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/41005/modules#:~:text=External%20Url-,Text%3A%20%22Navigating%20Your%20Career%20Journey%E2%80%9D%20(Meruelo%20Family%20Center%20for%20Career,Links%20to%20an%20external%20site.,-Activity%3A%20Complete%20the recognize that I’m living the good life right now. I once had a lacrosse coach tell me that “pressure is a privilege”—a quote I’ll never forget and which I believe can be applied to being a college student in the position to choose any career I want. Furthermore, I can often forget that the pursuit of a vocation is an indefinite process. As Fr. Himes notes, “there is no point where you can say, ‘The issue of my calling is settled.’ Vocations lead to vocations!” (Fr. Michael Himes, “Three Key Questions”, Moreau FYE Week Three). Yet again, pursuing a well-lived life has much to do with framing. Restated again here, I don’t know exactly what a well-lived life for me looks life. I don’t know what it entails specifically nor how to track it down. But I think I have an idea of what it feels like. Guided by the principle that once I can break from the frame of mind of living “as the Buddhusts say, in the ‘illusion of separateness.’” (Fr. Greg Boyle, “Tattoos on the Heart”, Moreau FYE Week Seven), I think the good life picks back up. I think that “One of the keys to doing it right, I’m finding, is to embrace the uncertainty of [life] and to continue looking for what makes me happy.” (Myself, Moreau FYE Week Five). I recognize that I’m living through what could be one of the happiest times of my life, but that the entirety of a life well-lived involves leaning into the day-to-day pursuit of what I find makes me happy. https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/41005/modules#:~:text=Attachment-,Text%3A%20%22Three%20Key%20Questions%22%20(adapted%20from%20Fr.%20Michael%20Himes),-Week%203%20QQC https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/41005/modules#:~:text=Attachment-,Text%3A%20%22Three%20Key%20Questions%22%20(adapted%20from%20Fr.%20Michael%20Himes),-Week%203%20QQC https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/41005/modules/items/168024