This is what we're after when we really, seriously…
This is what we're after when we really, seriously ask, "How should I live my life?" We're asking about the highest ideals, the deepest values, and the way they work themselves out in the little details. We're asking about our visions of a life that is led well, a life led as it ought to be led. We're asking about the proper orientation of all our activity-our true north. And we're asking about the heart of all that we do what the novelist and essayist James Bald-win (1924-1987) called our "moral center."
— from True North (Ethics, Integrity, Truth, Values) · Life Worth Living: a Guide to What Mattesr Most by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ry
In the book
And freedom, properly understood, is the engine of all of it: freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. That, in the end, is what the old question "how should I live?" is really asking — about the proper orientation of everything you do, your true north, your moral center. Trust the instrument over the feeling. When fear, greed, or the crowd say down is up, hold your heading and do the right thing because it's right. — True North (Ethics, Integrity, Truth, Values)