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 Baldwin (1924-1987) called our "moral center."
— from The Relationship With Yourself (Traits/Reflection) · Life Worth Living: a Guide to What Mattesr Most by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ry
In the book
Your values surface when you sit with the simple question, what matters most to me, and why — or when you examine your life through four lenses: the sweet moments full of vitality, the sad ones that broke your heart, the heroes you admire, and the story of how you would want to be remembered, because each of those points straight at a value you hold. Use that material to build something larger — an actual philosophy to live by, formed by sitting with the biggest question of all, why am I here; this is finally what it means to ask, seriously, how should I live — to search out your own true north, the moral center of everything you do. And give it silence to grow in: make a quiet space to hear your own inner voice, because to hear anything true, you first have to be still. — The Relationship With Yourself (Traits/Reflection)