what life is really like essay

Essay on Life for Students and Children

500+ words essay on life.

First of all, Life refers to an aspect of existence. This aspect processes acts, evaluates, and evolves through growth. Life is what distinguishes humans from inorganic matter. Some individuals certainly enjoy free will in Life. Others like slaves and prisoners don’t have that privilege. However, Life isn’t just about living independently in society. It is certainly much more than that. Hence, quality of Life carries huge importance. Above all, the ultimate purpose should be to live a meaningful life. A meaningful life is one which allows us to connect with our deeper self.

Why is Life Important?

One important aspect of Life is that it keeps going forward. This means nothing is permanent. Hence, there should be a reason to stay in dejection. A happy occasion will come to pass, just like a sad one. Above all, one must be optimistic no matter how bad things get. This is because nothing will stay forever. Every situation, occasion, and event shall pass. This is certainly a beauty of Life.

Many people become very sad because of failures . However, these people certainly fail to see the bright side. The bright side is that there is a reason for every failure. Therefore, every failure teaches us a valuable lesson. This means every failure builds experience. This experience is what improves the skills and efficiency of humans.

Probably a huge number of individuals complain that Life is a pain. Many people believe that the word pain is a synonym for Life. However, it is pain that makes us stronger. Pain is certainly an excellent way of increasing mental resilience. Above all, pain enriches the mind.

The uncertainty of death is what makes life so precious. No one knows the hour of one’s death. This probably is the most important reason to live life to the fullest. Staying in depression or being a workaholic is an utter wastage of Life. One must certainly enjoy the beautiful blessings of Life before death overtakes.

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How to Improve Quality of Life?

Most noteworthy, optimism is the ultimate way of enriching life. Optimism increases job performance, self-confidence, creativity, and skills. An optimistic person certainly can overcome huge hurdles.

Meditation is another useful way of improving Life quality. Meditation probably allows a person to dwell upon his past. This way one can avoid past mistakes. It also gives peace of mind to an individual. Furthermore, meditation reduces stress and tension.

Pursuing a hobby is a perfect way to bring meaning to life. Without a passion or interest, an individual’s life would probably be dull. Following a hobby certainly brings new energy to life. It provides new hope to live and experience Life.

In conclusion, Life is not something that one should take for granted. It’s certainly a shame to see individuals waste away their lives. We should be very thankful for experiencing our lives. Above all, everyone should try to make their life more meaningful.

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Eight brilliant student essays on what matters most in life.

Read winning essays from our spring 2019 student writing contest.

For the spring 2019 student writing contest, we invited students to read the YES! article “Three Things That Matter Most in Youth and Old Age” by Nancy Hill. Like the author, students interviewed someone significantly older than them about the three things that matter most in life. Students then wrote about what they learned, and about how their interviewees’ answers compare to their own top priorities.

The Winners

From the hundreds of essays written, these eight were chosen as winners. Be sure to read the author’s response to the essay winners and the literary gems that caught our eye. Plus, we share an essay from teacher Charles Sanderson, who also responded to the writing prompt.

Middle School Winner: Rory Leyva

High School Winner:  Praethong Klomsum

University Winner:  Emily Greenbaum

Powerful Voice Winner: Amanda Schwaben

Powerful Voice Winner: Antonia Mills

Powerful Voice Winner:  Isaac Ziemba

Powerful Voice Winner: Lily Hersch

“Tell It Like It Is” Interview Winner: Jonas Buckner

From the Author: Response to Student Winners

Literary Gems

From A Teacher: Charles Sanderson

From the Author: Response to Charles Sanderson

Middle School Winner

Village Home Education Resource Center, Portland, Ore.

The Lessons Of Mortality 

“As I’ve aged, things that are more personal to me have become somewhat less important. Perhaps I’ve become less self-centered with the awareness of mortality, how short one person’s life is.” This is how my 72-year-old grandma believes her values have changed over the course of her life. Even though I am only 12 years old, I know my life won’t last forever, and someday I, too, will reflect on my past decisions. We were all born to exist and eventually die, so we have evolved to value things in the context of mortality.

One of the ways I feel most alive is when I play roller derby. I started playing for the Rose City Rollers Juniors two years ago, and this year, I made the Rosebud All-Stars travel team. Roller derby is a fast-paced, full-contact sport. The physicality and intense training make me feel in control of and present in my body.

My roller derby team is like a second family to me. Adolescence is complicated. We understand each other in ways no one else can. I love my friends more than I love almost anything else. My family would have been higher on my list a few years ago, but as I’ve aged it has been important to make my own social connections.

Music led me to roller derby.  I started out jam skating at the roller rink. Jam skating is all about feeling the music. It integrates gymnastics, breakdancing, figure skating, and modern dance with R & B and hip hop music. When I was younger, I once lay down in the DJ booth at the roller rink and was lulled to sleep by the drawl of wheels rolling in rhythm and people talking about the things they came there to escape. Sometimes, I go up on the roof of my house at night to listen to music and feel the wind rustle my hair. These unique sensations make me feel safe like nothing else ever has.

My grandma tells me, “Being close with family and friends is the most important thing because I haven’t

always had that.” When my grandma was two years old, her father died. Her mother became depressed and moved around a lot, which made it hard for my grandma to make friends. Once my grandma went to college, she made lots of friends. She met my grandfather, Joaquin Leyva when she was working as a park ranger and he was a surfer. They bought two acres of land on the edge of a redwood forest and had a son and a daughter. My grandma created a stable family that was missing throughout her early life.

My grandma is motivated to maintain good health so she can be there for her family. I can relate because I have to be fit and strong for my team. Since she lost my grandfather to cancer, she realizes how lucky she is to have a functional body and no life-threatening illnesses. My grandma tries to eat well and exercise, but she still struggles with depression. Over time, she has learned that reaching out to others is essential to her emotional wellbeing.  

Caring for the earth is also a priority for my grandma I’ve been lucky to learn from my grandma. She’s taught me how to hunt for fossils in the desert and find shells on the beach. Although my grandma grew up with no access to the wilderness, she admired the green open areas of urban cemeteries. In college, she studied geology and hiked in the High Sierras. For years, she’s been an advocate for conserving wildlife habitat and open spaces.

Our priorities may seem different, but it all comes down to basic human needs. We all desire a purpose, strive to be happy, and need to be loved. Like Nancy Hill says in the YES! Magazine article “Three Things That Matter Most in Youth and Old Age,” it can be hard to decipher what is important in life. I believe that the constant search for satisfaction and meaning is the only thing everyone has in common. We all want to know what matters, and we walk around this confusing world trying to find it. The lessons I’ve learned from my grandma about forging connections, caring for my body, and getting out in the world inspire me to live my life my way before it’s gone.

Rory Leyva is a seventh-grader from Portland, Oregon. Rory skates for the Rosebuds All-Stars roller derby team. She loves listening to music and hanging out with her friends.

High School Winner

Praethong Klomsum

  Santa Monica High School, Santa Monica, Calif.

Time Only Moves Forward

Sandra Hernandez gazed at the tiny house while her mother’s gentle hands caressed her shoulders. It wasn’t much, especially for a family of five. This was 1960, she was 17, and her family had just moved to Culver City.

Flash forward to 2019. Sandra sits in a rocking chair, knitting a blanket for her latest grandchild, in the same living room. Sandra remembers working hard to feed her eight children. She took many different jobs before settling behind the cash register at a Japanese restaurant called Magos. “It was a struggle, and my husband Augustine, was planning to join the military at that time, too.”

In the YES! Magazine article “Three Things That Matter Most in Youth and Old Age,” author Nancy Hill states that one of the most important things is “…connecting with others in general, but in particular with those who have lived long lives.” Sandra feels similarly. It’s been hard for Sandra to keep in contact with her family, which leaves her downhearted some days. “It’s important to maintain that connection you have with your family, not just next-door neighbors you talk to once a month.”

Despite her age, Sandra is a daring woman. Taking risks is important to her, and she’ll try anything—from skydiving to hiking. Sandra has some regrets from the past, but nowadays, she doesn’t wonder about the “would have, could have, should haves.” She just goes for it with a smile.

Sandra thought harder about her last important thing, the blue and green blanket now finished and covering

her lap. “I’ve definitely lived a longer life than most, and maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I hope I can see the day my great-grandchildren are born.” She’s laughing, but her eyes look beyond what’s in front of her. Maybe she is reminiscing about the day she held her son for the first time or thinking of her grandchildren becoming parents. I thank her for her time and she waves it off, offering me a styrofoam cup of lemonade before I head for the bus station.

The bus is sparsely filled. A voice in my head reminds me to finish my 10-page history research paper before spring break. I take a window seat and pull out my phone and earbuds. My playlist is already on shuffle, and I push away thoughts of that dreaded paper. Music has been a constant in my life—from singing my lungs out in kindergarten to Barbie’s “I Need To Know,” to jamming out to Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” in sixth grade, to BTS’s “Intro: Never Mind” comforting me when I’m at my lowest. Music is my magic shop, a place where I can trade away my fears for calm.

I’ve always been afraid of doing something wrong—not finishing my homework or getting a C when I can do better. When I was 8, I wanted to be like the big kids. As I got older, I realized that I had exchanged my childhood longing for the 48 pack of crayons for bigger problems, balancing grades, a social life, and mental stability—all at once. I’m going to get older whether I like it or not, so there’s no point forcing myself to grow up faster.  I’m learning to live in the moment.

The bus is approaching my apartment, where I know my comfy bed and a home-cooked meal from my mom are waiting. My mom is hard-working, confident, and very stubborn. I admire her strength of character. She always keeps me in line, even through my rebellious phases.

My best friend sends me a text—an update on how broken her laptop is. She is annoying. She says the stupidest things and loves to state the obvious. Despite this, she never fails to make me laugh until my cheeks feel numb. The rest of my friends are like that too—loud, talkative, and always brightening my day. Even friends I stopped talking to have a place in my heart. Recently, I’ve tried to reconnect with some of them. This interview was possible because a close friend from sixth grade offered to introduce me to Sandra, her grandmother.  

I’m decades younger than Sandra, so my view of what’s important isn’t as broad as hers, but we share similar values, with friends and family at the top. I have a feeling that when Sandra was my age, she used to love music, too. Maybe in a few decades, when I’m sitting in my rocking chair, drawing in my sketchbook, I’ll remember this article and think back fondly to the days when life was simple.

Praethong Klomsum is a tenth-grader at Santa Monica High School in Santa Monica, California.  Praethong has a strange affinity for rhyme games and is involved in her school’s dance team. She enjoys drawing and writing, hoping to impact people willing to listen to her thoughts and ideas.

University Winner

Emily Greenbaum

Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 

The Life-Long War

Every morning we open our eyes, ready for a new day. Some immediately turn to their phones and social media. Others work out or do yoga. For a certain person, a deep breath and the morning sun ground him. He hears the clink-clank of his wife cooking low sodium meat for breakfast—doctor’s orders! He sees that the other side of the bed is already made, the dogs are no longer in the room, and his clothes are set out nicely on the loveseat.

Today, though, this man wakes up to something different: faded cream walls and jello. This person, my hero, is Master Chief Petty Officer Roger James.

I pulled up my chair close to Roger’s vinyl recliner so I could hear him above the noise of the beeping dialysis machine. I noticed Roger would occasionally glance at his wife Susan with sparkly eyes when he would recall memories of the war or their grandkids. He looked at Susan like she walked on water.

Roger James served his country for thirty years. Now, he has enlisted in another type of war. He suffers from a rare blood cancer—the result of the wars he fought in. Roger has good and bad days. He says, “The good outweighs the bad, so I have to be grateful for what I have on those good days.”

When Roger retired, he never thought the effects of the war would reach him. The once shallow wrinkles upon his face become deeper, as he tells me, “It’s just cancer. Others are suffering from far worse. I know I’ll make it.”

Like Nancy Hill did in her article “Three Things that Matter Most in Youth and Old Age,” I asked Roger, “What are the three most important things to you?” James answered, “My wife Susan, my grandkids, and church.”

Roger and Susan served together in the Vietnam war. She was a nurse who treated his cuts and scrapes one day. I asked Roger why he chose Susan. He said, “Susan told me to look at her while she cleaned me up. ‘This may sting, but don’t be a baby.’ When I looked into her eyes, I felt like she was looking into my soul, and I didn’t want her to leave. She gave me this sense of home. Every day I wake up, she makes me feel the same way, and I fall in love with her all over again.”

Roger and Susan have two kids and four grandkids, with great-grandchildren on the way. He claims that his grandkids give him the youth that he feels slowly escaping from his body. This adoring grandfather is energized by coaching t-ball and playing evening card games with the grandkids.

The last thing on his list was church. His oldest daughter married a pastor. Together they founded a church. Roger said that the connection between his faith and family is important to him because it gave him a reason to want to live again. I learned from Roger that when you’re across the ocean, you tend to lose sight of why you are fighting. When Roger returned, he didn’t have the will to live. Most days were a struggle, adapting back into a society that lacked empathy for the injuries, pain, and psychological trauma carried by returning soldiers. Church changed that for Roger and gave him a sense of purpose.

When I began this project, my attitude was to just get the assignment done. I never thought I could view Master Chief Petty Officer Roger James as more than a role model, but he definitely changed my mind. It’s as if Roger magically lit a fire inside of me and showed me where one’s true passions should lie. I see our similarities and embrace our differences. We both value family and our own connections to home—his home being church and mine being where I can breathe the easiest.

Master Chief Petty Officer Roger James has shown me how to appreciate what I have around me and that every once in a while, I should step back and stop to smell the roses. As we concluded the interview, amidst squeaky clogs and the stale smell of bleach and bedpans, I looked to Roger, his kind, tired eyes, and weathered skin, with a deeper sense of admiration, knowing that his values still run true, no matter what he faces.

Emily Greenbaum is a senior at Kent State University, graduating with a major in Conflict Management and minor in Geography. Emily hopes to use her major to facilitate better conversations, while she works in the Washington, D.C. area.  

Powerful Voice Winner

Amanda Schwaben

Wise Words From Winnie the Pooh

As I read through Nancy Hill’s article “Three Things That Matter Most in Youth and Old Age,” I was comforted by the similar responses given by both children and older adults. The emphasis participants placed on family, social connections, and love was not only heartwarming but hopeful. While the messages in the article filled me with warmth, I felt a twinge of guilt building within me. As a twenty-one-year-old college student weeks from graduation, I honestly don’t think much about the most important things in life. But if I was asked, I would most likely say family, friendship, and love. As much as I hate to admit it, I often find myself obsessing over achieving a successful career and finding a way to “save the world.”

A few weeks ago, I was at my family home watching the new Winnie the Pooh movie Christopher Robin with my mom and younger sister. Well, I wasn’t really watching. I had my laptop in front of me, and I was aggressively typing up an assignment. Halfway through the movie, I realized I left my laptop charger in my car. I walked outside into the brisk March air. Instinctively, I looked up. The sky was perfectly clear, revealing a beautiful array of stars. When my twin sister and I were in high school, we would always take a moment to look up at the sparkling night sky before we came into the house after soccer practice.

I think that was the last time I stood in my driveway and gazed at the stars. I did not get the laptop charger from

my car; instead, I turned around and went back inside. I shut my laptop and watched the rest of the movie. My twin sister loves Winnie the Pooh. So much so that my parents got her a stuffed animal version of him for Christmas. While I thought he was adorable and a token of my childhood, I did not really understand her obsession. However, it was clear to me after watching the movie. Winnie the Pooh certainly had it figured out. He believed that the simple things in life were the most important: love, friendship, and having fun.

I thought about asking my mom right then what the three most important things were to her, but I decided not to. I just wanted to be in the moment. I didn’t want to be doing homework. It was a beautiful thing to just sit there and be present with my mom and sister.

I did ask her, though, a couple of weeks later. Her response was simple.  All she said was family, health, and happiness. When she told me this, I imagined Winnie the Pooh smiling. I think he would be proud of that answer.

I was not surprised by my mom’s reply. It suited her perfectly. I wonder if we relearn what is most important when we grow older—that the pressure to be successful subsides. Could it be that valuing family, health, and happiness is what ends up saving the world?

Amanda Schwaben is a graduating senior from Kent State University with a major in Applied Conflict Management. Amanda also has minors in Psychology and Interpersonal Communication. She hopes to further her education and focus on how museums not only preserve history but also promote peace.

Antonia Mills

Rachel Carson High School, Brooklyn, N.Y. 

Decoding The Butterfly

For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must first digest itself. The caterpillar, overwhelmed by accumulating tissue, splits its skin open to form its protective shell, the chrysalis, and later becomes the pretty butterfly we all know and love. There are approximately 20,000 species of butterflies, and just as every species is different, so is the life of every butterfly. No matter how long and hard a caterpillar has strived to become the colorful and vibrant butterfly that we marvel at on a warm spring day, it does not live a long life. A butterfly can live for a year, six months, two weeks, and even as little as twenty-four hours.

I have often wondered if butterflies live long enough to be blissful of blue skies. Do they take time to feast upon the sweet nectar they crave, midst their hustling life of pollinating pretty flowers? Do they ever take a lull in their itineraries, or are they always rushing towards completing their four-stage metamorphosis? Has anyone asked the butterfly, “Who are you?” instead of “What are you”? Or, How did you get here, on my windowsill?  How did you become ‘you’?

Humans are similar to butterflies. As a caterpillar

Suzanna Ruby/Getty Images

becomes a butterfly, a baby becomes an elder. As a butterfly soars through summer skies, an elder watches summer skies turn into cold winter nights and back toward summer skies yet again.  And as a butterfly flits slowly by the porch light, a passerby makes assumptions about the wrinkled, slow-moving elder, who is sturdier than he appears. These creatures are not seen for who they are—who they were—because people have “better things to do” or they are too busy to ask, “How are you”?

Our world can be a lonely place. Pressured by expectations, haunted by dreams, overpowered by weakness, and drowned out by lofty goals, we tend to forget ourselves—and others. Rather than hang onto the strands of our diminishing sanity, we might benefit from listening to our elders. Many elders have experienced setbacks in their young lives. Overcoming hardship and surviving to old age is wisdom that they carry.  We can learn from them—and can even make their day by taking the time to hear their stories.  

Nancy Hill, who wrote the YES! Magazine article “Three Things That Matter Most in Youth and Old Age,” was right: “We live among such remarkable people, yet few know their stories.” I know a lot about my grandmother’s life, and it isn’t as serene as my own. My grandmother, Liza, who cooks every day, bakes bread on holidays for our neighbors, brings gifts to her doctor out of the kindness of her heart, and makes conversation with neighbors even though she is isn’t fluent in English—Russian is her first language—has struggled all her life. Her mother, Anna, a single parent, had tuberculosis, and even though she had an inviolable spirit, she was too frail to care for four children. She passed away when my grandmother was sixteen, so my grandmother and her siblings spent most of their childhood in an orphanage. My grandmother got married at nineteen to my grandfather, Pinhas. He was a man who loved her more than he loved himself and was a godsend to every person he met. Liza was—and still is—always quick to do what was best for others, even if that person treated her poorly. My grandmother has lived with physical pain all her life, yet she pushed herself to climb heights that she wasn’t ready for. Against all odds, she has lived to tell her story to people who are willing to listen. And I always am.

I asked my grandmother, “What are three things most important to you?” Her answer was one that I already expected: One, for everyone to live long healthy lives. Two, for you to graduate from college. Three, for you to always remember that I love you.

What may be basic to you means the world to my grandmother. She just wants what she never had the chance to experience: a healthy life, an education, and the chance to express love to the people she values. The three things that matter most to her may be so simple and ordinary to outsiders, but to her, it is so much more. And who could take that away?

Antonia Mills was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and attends Rachel Carson High School.  Antonia enjoys creative activities, including writing, painting, reading, and baking. She hopes to pursue culinary arts professionally in the future. One of her favorite quotes is, “When you start seeing your worth, you’ll find it harder to stay around people who don’t.” -Emily S.P.  

  Powerful Voice Winner

   Isaac Ziemba

Odyssey Multiage Program, Bainbridge Island, Wash. 

This Former State Trooper Has His Priorities Straight: Family, Climate Change, and Integrity

I have a personal connection to people who served in the military and first responders. My uncle is a first responder on the island I live on, and my dad retired from the Navy. That was what made a man named Glen Tyrell, a state trooper for 25 years, 2 months and 9 days, my first choice to interview about what three things matter in life. In the YES! Magazine article “The Three Things That Matter Most in Youth and Old Age,” I learned that old and young people have a great deal in common. I know that’s true because Glen and I care about a lot of the same things.

For Glen, family is at the top of his list of important things. “My wife was, and is, always there for me. My daughters mean the world to me, too, but Penny is my partner,” Glen said. I can understand why Glen’s wife is so important to him. She’s family. Family will always be there for you.

Glen loves his family, and so do I with all my heart. My dad especially means the world to me. He is my top supporter and tells me that if I need help, just “say the word.” When we are fishing or crabbing, sometimes I

think, what if these times were erased from my memory? I wouldn’t be able to describe the horrible feeling that would rush through my mind, and I’m sure that Glen would feel the same about his wife.

My uncle once told me that the world is always going to change over time. It’s what the world has turned out to be that worries me. Both Glen and I are extremely concerned about climate change and the effect that rising temperatures have on animals and their habitats. We’re driving them to extinction. Some people might say, “So what? Animals don’t pay taxes or do any of the things we do.” What we are doing to them is like the Black Death times 100.

Glen is also frustrated by how much plastic we use and where it ends up. He would be shocked that an explorer recently dived to the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean—seven miles!— and discovered a plastic bag and candy wrappers. Glen told me that, unfortunately, his generation did the damage and my generation is here to fix it. We need to take better care of Earth because if we don’t, we, as a species, will have failed.

Both Glen and I care deeply for our families and the earth, but for our third important value, I chose education and Glen chose integrity. My education is super important to me because without it, I would be a blank slate. I wouldn’t know how to figure out problems. I wouldn’t be able to tell right from wrong. I wouldn’t understand the Bill of Rights. I would be stuck. Everyone should be able to go to school, no matter where they’re from or who they are.  It makes me angry and sad to think that some people, especially girls, get shot because they are trying to go to school. I understand how lucky I am.

Integrity is sacred to Glen—I could tell by the serious tone of Glen’s voice when he told me that integrity was the code he lived by as a former state trooper. He knew that he had the power to change a person’s life, and he was committed to not abusing that power.  When Glen put someone under arrest—and my uncle says the same—his judgment and integrity were paramount. “Either you’re right or you’re wrong.” You can’t judge a person by what you think, you can only judge a person from what you know.”

I learned many things about Glen and what’s important in life, but there is one thing that stands out—something Glen always does and does well. Glen helps people. He did it as a state trooper, and he does it in our school, where he works on construction projects. Glen told me that he believes that our most powerful tools are writing and listening to others. I think those tools are important, too, but I also believe there are other tools to help solve many of our problems and create a better future: to be compassionate, to create caring relationships, and to help others. Just like Glen Tyrell does each and every day.

Isaac Ziemba is in seventh grade at the Odyssey Multiage Program on a small island called Bainbridge near Seattle, Washington. Isaac’s favorite subject in school is history because he has always been interested in how the past affects the future. In his spare time, you can find Isaac hunting for crab with his Dad, looking for artifacts around his house with his metal detector, and having fun with his younger cousin, Conner.     

Lily Hersch

 The Crest Academy, Salida, Colo.

The Phone Call

Dear Grandpa,

In my short span of life—12 years so far—you’ve taught me a lot of important life lessons that I’ll always have with me. Some of the values I talk about in this writing I’ve learned from you.

Dedicated to my Gramps.

In the YES! Magazine article “Three Things That Matter Most in Youth and Old Age,” author and photographer Nancy Hill asked people to name the three things that mattered most to them. After reading the essay prompt for the article, I immediately knew who I wanted to interview: my grandpa Gil.      

My grandpa was born on January 25, 1942. He lived in a minuscule tenement in The Bronx with his mother,

father, and brother. His father wasn’t around much, and, when he was, he was reticent and would snap occasionally, revealing his constrained mental pain. My grandpa says this happened because my great grandfather did not have a father figure in his life. His mother was a classy, sharp lady who was the head secretary at a local police district station. My grandpa and his brother Larry did not care for each other. Gramps said he was very close to his mother, and Larry wasn’t. Perhaps Larry was envious for what he didn’t have.

Decades after little to no communication with his brother, my grandpa decided to spontaneously visit him in Florida, where he resided with his wife. Larry was taken aback at the sudden reappearance of his brother and told him to leave. Since then, the two brothers have not been in contact. My grandpa doesn’t even know if Larry is alive.         

My grandpa is now a retired lawyer, married to my wonderful grandma, and living in a pretty house with an ugly dog named BoBo.

So, what’s important to you, Gramps?

He paused a second, then replied, “Family, kindness, and empathy.”

“Family, because it’s my family. It’s important to stay connected with your family. My brother, father, and I never connected in the way I wished, and sometimes I contemplated what could’ve happened.  But you can’t change the past. So, that’s why family’s important to me.”

Family will always be on my “Top Three Most Important Things” list, too. I can’t imagine not having my older brother, Zeke, or my grandma in my life. I wonder how other kids feel about their families? How do kids trapped and separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border feel?  What about orphans? Too many questions, too few answers.

“Kindness, because growing up and not seeing a lot of kindness made me realize how important it is to have that in the world. Kindness makes the world go round.”

What is kindness? Helping my brother, Eli, who has Down syndrome, get ready in the morning? Telling people what they need to hear, rather than what they want to hear? Maybe, for now, I’ll put wisdom, not kindness, on my list.

“Empathy, because of all the killings and shootings [in this country.] We also need to care for people—people who are not living in as good circumstances as I have. Donald Trump and other people I’ve met have no empathy. Empathy is very important.”

Empathy is something I’ve felt my whole life. It’ll always be important to me like it is important to my grandpa. My grandpa shows his empathy when he works with disabled children. Once he took a disabled child to a Christina Aguilera concert because that child was too young to go by himself. The moments I feel the most empathy are when Eli gets those looks from people. Seeing Eli wonder why people stare at him like he’s a freak makes me sad, and annoyed that they have the audacity to stare.

After this 2 minute and 36-second phone call, my grandpa has helped me define what’s most important to me at this time in my life: family, wisdom, and empathy. Although these things are important now, I realize they can change and most likely will.

When I’m an old woman, I envision myself scrambling through a stack of storage boxes and finding this paper. Perhaps after reading words from my 12-year-old self, I’ll ask myself “What’s important to me?”

Lily Hersch is a sixth-grader at Crest Academy in Salida, Colorado. Lily is an avid indoorsman, finding joy in competitive spelling, art, and of course, writing. She does not like Swiss cheese.

  “Tell It Like It Is” Interview Winner

Jonas Buckner

KIPP: Gaston College Preparatory, Gaston, N.C.

Lessons My Nana Taught Me

I walked into the house. In the other room, I heard my cousin screaming at his game. There were a lot of Pioneer Woman dishes everywhere. The room had the television on max volume. The fan in the other room was on. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to learn something powerful.

I was in my Nana’s house, and when I walked in, she said, “Hey Monkey Butt.”

I said, “Hey Nana.”

Before the interview, I was talking to her about what I was gonna interview her on. Also, I had asked her why I might have wanted to interview her, and she responded with, “Because you love me, and I love you too.”

Now, it was time to start the interview. The first

question I asked was the main and most important question ever: “What three things matter most to you and you only?”

She thought of it very thoughtfully and responded with, “My grandchildren, my children, and my health.”

Then, I said, “OK, can you please tell me more about your health?”

She responded with, “My health is bad right now. I have heart problems, blood sugar, and that’s about it.” When she said it, she looked at me and smiled because she loved me and was happy I chose her to interview.

I replied with, “K um, why is it important to you?”

She smiled and said, “Why is it…Why is my health important? Well, because I want to live a long time and see my grandchildren grow up.”

I was scared when she said that, but she still smiled. I was so happy, and then I said, “Has your health always been important to you.”

She responded with “Nah.”

Then, I asked, “Do you happen to have a story to help me understand your reasoning?”

She said, “No, not really.”

Now we were getting into the next set of questions. I said, “Remember how you said that your grandchildren matter to you? Can you please tell me why they matter to you?”

Then, she responded with, “So I can spend time with them, play with them, and everything.”

Next, I asked the same question I did before: “Have you always loved your grandchildren?” 

She responded with, “Yes, they have always been important to me.”

Then, the next two questions I asked she had no response to at all. She was very happy until I asked, “Why do your children matter most to you?”

She had a frown on and responded, “My daughter Tammy died a long time ago.”

Then, at this point, the other questions were answered the same as the other ones. When I left to go home I was thinking about how her answers were similar to mine. She said health, and I care about my health a lot, and I didn’t say, but I wanted to. She also didn’t have answers for the last two questions on each thing, and I was like that too.

The lesson I learned was that no matter what, always keep pushing because even though my aunt or my Nana’s daughter died, she kept on pushing and loving everyone. I also learned that everything should matter to us. Once again, I chose to interview my Nana because she matters to me, and I know when she was younger she had a lot of things happen to her, so I wanted to know what she would say. The point I’m trying to make is that be grateful for what you have and what you have done in life.

Jonas Buckner is a sixth-grader at KIPP: Gaston College Preparatory in Gaston, North Carolina. Jonas’ favorite activities are drawing, writing, math, piano, and playing AltSpace VR. He found his passion for writing in fourth grade when he wrote a quick autobiography. Jonas hopes to become a horror writer someday.

From The Author: Responses to Student Winners

Dear Emily, Isaac, Antonia, Rory, Praethong, Amanda, Lily, and Jonas,

Your thought-provoking essays sent my head spinning. The more I read, the more impressed I was with the depth of thought, beauty of expression, and originality. It left me wondering just how to capture all of my reactions in a single letter. After multiple false starts, I’ve landed on this: I will stick to the theme of three most important things.

The three things I found most inspirational about your essays:

You listened.

You connected.

We live in troubled times. Tensions mount between countries, cultures, genders, religious beliefs, and generations. If we fail to find a way to understand each other, to see similarities between us, the future will be fraught with increased hostility.

You all took critical steps toward connecting with someone who might not value the same things you do by asking a person who is generations older than you what matters to them. Then, you listened to their answers. You saw connections between what is important to them and what is important to you. Many of you noted similarities, others wondered if your own list of the three most important things would change as you go through life. You all saw the validity of the responses you received and looked for reasons why your interviewees have come to value what they have.

It is through these things—asking, listening, and connecting—that we can begin to bridge the differences in experiences and beliefs that are currently dividing us.

Individual observations

Each one of you made observations that all of us, regardless of age or experience, would do well to keep in mind. I chose one quote from each person and trust those reading your essays will discover more valuable insights.

“Our priorities may seem different, but they come back to basic human needs. We all desire a purpose, strive to be happy, and work to make a positive impact.” 

“You can’t judge a person by what you think , you can only judge a person by what you know .”

Emily (referencing your interviewee, who is battling cancer):

“Master Chief Petty Officer James has shown me how to appreciate what I have around me.”

Lily (quoting your grandfather):

“Kindness makes the world go round.”

“Everything should matter to us.”

Praethong (quoting your interviewee, Sandra, on the importance of family):

“It’s important to always maintain that connection you have with each other, your family, not just next-door neighbors you talk to once a month.”

“I wonder if maybe we relearn what is most important when we grow older. That the pressure to be successful subsides and that valuing family, health, and happiness is what ends up saving the world.”

“Listen to what others have to say. Listen to the people who have already experienced hardship. You will learn from them and you can even make their day by giving them a chance to voice their thoughts.”

I end this letter to you with the hope that you never stop asking others what is most important to them and that you to continue to take time to reflect on what matters most to you…and why. May you never stop asking, listening, and connecting with others, especially those who may seem to be unlike you. Keep writing, and keep sharing your thoughts and observations with others, for your ideas are awe-inspiring.

I also want to thank the more than 1,000 students who submitted essays. Together, by sharing what’s important to us with others, especially those who may believe or act differently, we can fill the world with joy, peace, beauty, and love.

We received many outstanding essays for the Winter 2019 Student Writing Competition. Though not every participant can win the contest, we’d like to share some excerpts that caught our eye:

Whether it is a painting on a milky canvas with watercolors or pasting photos onto a scrapbook with her granddaughters, it is always a piece of artwork to her. She values the things in life that keep her in the moment, while still exploring things she may not have initially thought would bring her joy.

—Ondine Grant-Krasno, Immaculate Heart Middle School, Los Angeles, Calif.

“Ganas”… It means “desire” in Spanish. My ganas is fueled by my family’s belief in me. I cannot and will not fail them. 

—Adan Rios, Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

I hope when I grow up I can have the love for my kids like my grandma has for her kids. She makes being a mother even more of a beautiful thing than it already is.

—Ashley Shaw, Columbus City Prep School for Girls, Grove City, Ohio

You become a collage of little pieces of your friends and family. They also encourage you to be the best you can be. They lift you up onto the seat of your bike, they give you the first push, and they don’t hesitate to remind you that everything will be alright when you fall off and scrape your knee.

— Cecilia Stanton, Bellafonte Area Middle School, Bellafonte, Pa.

Without good friends, I wouldn’t know what I would do to endure the brutal machine of public education.

—Kenneth Jenkins, Garrison Middle School, Walla Walla, Wash.

My dog, as ridiculous as it may seem, is a beautiful example of what we all should aspire to be. We should live in the moment, not stress, and make it our goal to lift someone’s spirits, even just a little.

—Kate Garland, Immaculate Heart Middle School, Los Angeles, Calif. 

I strongly hope that every child can spare more time to accompany their elderly parents when they are struggling, and moving forward, and give them more care and patience. so as to truly achieve the goal of “you accompany me to grow up, and I will accompany you to grow old.”

—Taiyi Li, Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

I have three cats, and they are my brothers and sisters. We share a special bond that I think would not be possible if they were human. Since they do not speak English, we have to find other ways to connect, and I think that those other ways can be more powerful than language.

—Maya Dombroskie, Delta Program Middle School, Boulsburg, Pa.

We are made to love and be loved. To have joy and be relational. As a member of the loneliest generation in possibly all of history, I feel keenly aware of the need for relationships and authentic connection. That is why I decided to talk to my grandmother.

—Luke Steinkamp, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

After interviewing my grandma and writing my paper, I realized that as we grow older, the things that are important to us don’t change, what changes is why those things are important to us.

—Emily Giffer, Our Lady Star of the Sea, Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.

The media works to marginalize elders, often isolating them and their stories, and the wealth of knowledge that comes with their additional years of lived experiences. It also undermines the depth of children’s curiosity and capacity to learn and understand. When the worlds of elders and children collide, a classroom opens.

—Cristina Reitano, City College of San Francisco, San Francisco, Calif.

My values, although similar to my dad, only looked the same in the sense that a shadow is similar to the object it was cast on.

—Timofey Lisenskiy, Santa Monica High School, Santa Monica, Calif.

I can release my anger through writing without having to take it out on someone. I can escape and be a different person; it feels good not to be myself for a while. I can make up my own characters, so I can be someone different every day, and I think that’s pretty cool.

—Jasua Carillo, Wellness, Business, and Sports School, Woodburn, Ore. 

Notice how all the important things in his life are people: the people who he loves and who love him back. This is because “people are more important than things like money or possessions, and families are treasures,” says grandpa Pat. And I couldn’t agree more.

—Brody Hartley, Garrison Middle School, Walla Walla, Wash.  

Curiosity for other people’s stories could be what is needed to save the world.

—Noah Smith, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

Peace to me is a calm lake without a ripple in sight. It’s a starry night with a gentle breeze that pillows upon your face. It’s the absence of arguments, fighting, or war. It’s when egos stop working against each other and finally begin working with each other. Peace is free from fear, anxiety, and depression. To me, peace is an important ingredient in the recipe of life.

—JP Bogan, Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

From A Teacher

Charles Sanderson

Wellness, Business and Sports School, Woodburn, Ore. 

The Birthday Gift

I’ve known Jodelle for years, watching her grow from a quiet and timid twelve-year-old to a young woman who just returned from India, where she played Kabaddi, a kind of rugby meets Red Rover.

One of my core beliefs as an educator is to show up for the things that matter to kids, so I go to their games, watch their plays, and eat the strawberry jam they make for the county fair. On this occasion, I met Jodelle at a robotics competition to watch her little sister Abby compete. Think Nerd Paradise: more hats made from traffic cones than Golden State Warrior ball caps, more unicorn capes than Nike swooshes, more fanny packs with Legos than clutches with eyeliner.

We started chatting as the crowd chanted and waved six-foot flags for teams like Mystic Biscuits, Shrek, and everyone’s nemesis The Mean Machine. Apparently, when it’s time for lunch at a robotics competition, they don’t mess around. The once-packed gym was left to Jodelle and me, and we kept talking and talking. I eventually asked her about the three things that matter to her most.

She told me about her mom, her sister, and her addiction—to horses. I’ve read enough of her writing to know that horses were her drug of choice and her mom and sister were her support network.

I learned about her desire to become a teacher and how hours at the barn with her horse, Heart, recharge her when she’s exhausted. At one point, our rambling conversation turned to a topic I’ve known far too well—her father.

Later that evening, I received an email from Jodelle, and she had a lot to say. One line really struck me: “In so many movies, I have seen a dad wanting to protect his daughter from the world, but I’ve only understood the scene cognitively. Yesterday, I felt it.”

Long ago, I decided that I would never be a dad. I had seen movies with fathers and daughters, and for me, those movies might as well have been Star Wars, ET, or Alien—worlds filled with creatures I’d never know. However, over the years, I’ve attended Jodelle’s parent-teacher conferences, gone to her graduation, and driven hours to watch her ride Heart at horse shows. Simply, I showed up. I listened. I supported.

Jodelle shared a series of dad poems, as well. I had read the first two poems in their original form when Jodelle was my student. The revised versions revealed new graphic details of her past. The third poem, however, was something entirely different.

She called the poems my early birthday present. When I read the lines “You are my father figure/Who I look up to/Without being looked down on,” I froze for an instant and had to reread the lines. After fifty years of consciously deciding not to be a dad, I was seen as one—and it felt incredible. Jodelle’s poem and recognition were two of the best presents I’ve ever received.

I  know that I was the language arts teacher that Jodelle needed at the time, but her poem revealed things I never knew I taught her: “My father figure/ Who taught me/ That listening is for observing the world/ That listening is for learning/Not obeying/Writing is for connecting/Healing with others.”

Teaching is often a thankless job, one that frequently brings more stress and anxiety than joy and hope. Stress erodes my patience. Anxiety curtails my ability to enter each interaction with every student with the grace they deserve. However, my time with Jodelle reminds me of the importance of leaning in and listening.

In the article “Three Things That Matter Most in Youth and Old Age” by Nancy Hill, she illuminates how we “live among such remarkable people, yet few know their stories.” For the last twenty years, I’ve had the privilege to work with countless of these “remarkable people,” and I’ve done my best to listen, and, in so doing, I hope my students will realize what I’ve known for a long time; their voices matter and deserve to be heard, but the voices of their tias and abuelitos and babushkas are equally important. When we take the time to listen, I believe we do more than affirm the humanity of others; we affirm our own as well.

Charles Sanderson has grounded his nineteen-year teaching career in a philosophy he describes as “Mirror, Window, Bridge.” Charles seeks to ensure all students see themselves, see others, and begin to learn the skills to build bridges of empathy, affinity, and understanding between communities and cultures that may seem vastly different. He proudly teaches at the Wellness, Business and Sports School in Woodburn, Oregon, a school and community that brings him joy and hope on a daily basis.

From   The Author: Response to Charles Sanderson

Dear Charles Sanderson,

Thank you for submitting an essay of your own in addition to encouraging your students to participate in YES! Magazine’s essay contest.

Your essay focused not on what is important to you, but rather on what is important to one of your students. You took what mattered to her to heart, acting upon it by going beyond the school day and creating a connection that has helped fill a huge gap in her life. Your efforts will affect her far beyond her years in school. It is clear that your involvement with this student is far from the only time you have gone beyond the classroom, and while you are not seeking personal acknowledgment, I cannot help but applaud you.

In an ideal world, every teacher, every adult, would show the same interest in our children and adolescents that you do. By taking the time to listen to what is important to our youth, we can help them grow into compassionate, caring adults, capable of making our world a better place.

Your concerted efforts to guide our youth to success not only as students but also as human beings is commendable. May others be inspired by your insights, concerns, and actions. You define excellence in teaching.

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• School Education /

Essay on Life for Students in English: 100 Words, 200 Words, 350 Words

• Updated on  
• Apr 12, 2024

Life is a culmination of moments, a blend of laughter and tears, victory and challenges. From the moment we take our first breath to the day, we draw our last. It is a journey filled with countless experiences, lessons, and emotions. From the tiniest of creatures to the tallest of trees, every living being is a part of this incredible journey. In this blog, we will explore the multifaceted essence of life through three unique essays.

Also Read : Essay on My Aim in Life

Table of Contents

• 1 Sample Essay on Life in 100 words
• 2 Sample Essay on Life in 200 words
• 3 Sample Essay on Life in 350 words

Sample Essay on Life in 100 words

Life is a collection of stories etched in time, each page filled with lessons that have been learned. The journey of life is a rollercoaster, with peaks of joy and valleys of despair. It teaches us self-reliance, adaptability, and the importance of cherishing every passing second.

As we navigate through unknown paths, we discover the true essence of our being – the passions that fuel us and the relationships that sustain us. Life is a gift, a canvas upon which we paint our purpose. Let us embrace each passing day, for they collectively make the masterpiece that is our life.

Sample Essay on Life in 200 words

Life is a river that flows with an ever-changing current, carrying us through seasons of growth and moments of introspection. It presents us with opportunities to evolve, to change ourselves, and emerge as a new. Life is a precious gift that surrounds us with wonders every day. We wake up to the warmth of the sun, the chirping of birds, and the love of our family. Each moment teaches us something valuable – to be kind, to learn, and to grow. 

As we play, study, and share, we make memories that become the colours of our life’s canvas. Life is about enjoying the little things – a smile, a hug, a blooming flower. The challenges we face are sometimes difficult but are also stepping stones that move and motivate us toward self-discovery. Life’s journey is not about reaching a destination, but about following the purpose and the richness of the path itself.

Also Read: Essay on My Hobby

Sample Essay on Life in 350 words

Life is a journey of discovery, where we encounter moments both big and small that shape our identity. From the joyful laughter of childhood to the trials of adolescence, each phase of life imparts unique lessons.

Each chapter unveils a new facet of our identity, inviting us to delve deeper into the essence of who we are. As we grow, we learn that life isn’t just about happiness; it’s about resilience in the face of difficulties. Challenges, like puzzles, help us develop problem-solving skills and the ability to adapt. Friends and family accompany us on this journey, providing companionship, support, and love.

Life, a masterpiece painted by time, is about making choices, experiences, and opportunities. In the early years, life is a playground of curiosity, where we explore the world with wonder-filled eyes. Learning becomes our companion, and mistakes are stepping stones to growth. 

Adolescence brings a whirlwind of change – physical, emotional, and psychological. It’s a time of self-discovery, as we unfold our passions, talents, and values. Amidst this transformation, friendships blossom, leaving an indelible mark on our hearts. Responsibilities increase, and we navigate through the maze of choices, from careers to relationships. Life becomes full of ambitions , dreams, setbacks, and achievements. Failures and successes become part of our narrative, driving us to strive harder and reach higher. 

In the sunset years, life’s pace may slow, but its essence deepens. Memories become treasures, and experiences turn into life lessons. Family becomes a stronghold of support, and the wisdom garnered over the years becomes a guiding light. Reflection becomes a companion, and gratitude fills our hearts as we look back on the incredible journey we’ve travelled.

In conclusion, life is a journey that encompasses the spectrum of human existence. From the innocence of childhood to the wisdom of old age, every phase contributes to our growth and understanding. Through challenges and triumphs, connections, and solitude, we weave a tale unique to ours. So, let’s embrace life’s twists and turns, for they shape us into the individuals we are meant to be.

Also Read: 100+ Rumi Quotes on Love, Life, Nature & the Universe

Ans. When children and students write a life essay, they have the opportunity to contemplate the wonder and significance of their being.

Ans. The pursuit of happiness is so connected in entirety that it is woven into our life, as we seek fulfillment. It is in the phase of low that we often find the strength to rise, and in the quiet moments of being ourselves, we hear our truest desires. 

Ans. A life story is a valuable personal account of both personal and professional experiences that are shared by the individual.

Related Reads

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu.

Rajshree Lahoty

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Question of the Month

What is life, the following answers to this fundamental question each win a random book..

Life is the aspect of existence that processes, acts, reacts, evaluates, and evolves through growth (reproduction and metabolism). The crucial difference between life and non-life (or non-living things) is that life uses energy for physical and conscious development. Life is anything that grows and eventually dies, i.e., ceases to proliferate and be cognizant. Can we say that viruses, for example, are cognizant? Yes, insofar as they react to stimuli; but they are alive essentially because they reproduce and grow. Computers are non-living because even though they can cognize, they do not develop biologically (grow), and cannot produce offspring. It is not cognition that determines life, then: it is rather proliferation and maturation towards a state of death; and death occurs only to living substances.

Or is the question, ‘What is the meaning (purpose) of life?’ That’s a real tough one. But I think that the meaning of life is the ideals we impose upon it, what we demand of it. I’ve come to reaffirm my Boy Scout motto, give or take a few words, that the meaning of life is to: Do good, Be Good, but also to Receive Good. The foggy term in this advice, of course, is ‘good’; but I leave that to the intuitive powers that we all share.

There are, of course, many intuitively clear examples of Doing Good: by retrieving a crying baby from a dumpster; by trying to rescue someone who’s drowning. Most of us would avoid murdering; and most of us would refrain from other acts we find intuitively wrong. So our natural intuitions determine the meaning of life for us; and it seems for other species as well, for those intuitions resonate through much of life and give it its purpose.

Tom Baranski, Somerset, New Jersey

The ceramic artist Edmund de Waal places an object in front of him and begins to tell a story. Even if the patina, chips and signs of repair of the inanimate object hint at its history, the story is told by a living observer. A living thing is an object that contains its story within itself. Life’s story is held in the genome, based in DNA. Maybe other ways for memorising the story may be discovered, but in environments subject to common chemical processes, common methods are likely to emerge.

Although we have only the example of the Earth, it shows that life will evolve to fill every usable niche, and to secure and further diversify those niches. This should not be thought of as purposeful. Life embodies a ‘plan’, but one that does not specify ends, only methods acquired iteratively. Inanimate processes can be cyclic but not iterative: they do not learn from past mistakes.

Life exists at many levels. Life is also a process through which energy and materials are transformed; but so is non-life. The difference is that the process of life is intimately linked to story it contains, whereas non-life is indifferent to the story we impose upon it. Yet life is only a story, so it can act only through matter. Therefore life is by nature a toolmaker. Its tools are potentially everything that exists, and its workshop is potentially the whole universe. So why do humans risk undermining the life of which they are part? Because they try to impose upon it a story of their own making. Yet humans, the ‘tool-making animals’, are themselves tools of life, in an unplanned experiment.

Nicholas Taylor, Little Sandhurst, Berkshire

First the technical definition. Life is self-organising chemistry which reproduces itself and passes on its evolved characteristics, encoded in DNA. In thermodynamics terms, it has the ability to reduce local entropy or disorganisation, thus locally contravening the third law of thermodynamics.

But what is life really about , if anything? The two possibilities are, life is either a meaningless accident arising from the laws of physics operating in a meaningless universe, or it is a step in a planned ‘experiment’. I say ‘step’, because this cannot be the end. The current state of life is as yet too unstable and undeveloped for it to be the end. And I say ‘experiment’ because the evolutionary nature of life suggests that its future is not known. If therefore the universe itself has a purpose, it seems most likely to be to explore what the outcome of the evolutionary experiment would be.

But what will be the outcome? If, as many physicists now believe, the universe is only information, then harnessing all the resources of the universe in one giant evolutionary process could plausibly provide a useful outcome for a species clever enough to create the universe in the first place. On this interpretation, life will ultimately organise all the physical resources of the universe into a single self-conscious intelligence, which in turn will then be able to interact with its creator(s).

Dr Harry Fuchs, Flecknoe, Warwickshire

Life is the embodiment of selfishness! Life is selfish because it is for itself in two ways: it is for its own survival, and it is for its own reproduction. This desire is embodied in an adaptive autocatalytic chemical system, forming life’s embodied mind.

Anything that is not itself is the other; and the collection of others constitute its environment. The organism must destructively use the other to satisfy its reproductive desire, but on achieving this, it produces an additional other – but now one that also embodies its own selfish aim and the means to satisfy this aim. Therefore, even by an organism satisfying its desire, it makes the continuing satisfaction of its desires ever more difficult to achieve. A partial solution to this dilemma is for genetically-related entities to form a cooperating society.

The underlying mechanism of evolution is therefore the iteration of the embodied desire within an ever more complex competitive and social environment. Over vast numbers of iterations, this process forces some life-forms along a pathway that solves the desire for survival and reproduction by developing ever more complex and adaptable minds. This is achieved by supplementing their underlying cellular embodied chemistry with a specialist organ (although still based on chemistry) that we call its brain, able to rapidly process electrical signals. Advanced minds can collect and process vast inputs of data by ‘projecting’ the derived output back onto its environmental source, that is by acting. However advanced it might be, an organism is still driven by the same basic needs for survival and reproduction. The creative process, however, leads the organism towards an increasingly aesthetic experience of the world. This is why for us the world we experience is both rich and beautiful.

Dr Steve Brewer, St Ives, Cornwall

In our scientific age, we look to the biologists to define ‘life’ for us. After all, it is their subject matter. I believe they have yet to reach consensus, but a biological definition would be something like, ‘Life is an arrangement of molecules with qualities of self-sustenance and self-replication’. This kind of definition might serve the purposes of biologists, but for me, it has five deficiencies. First, any definition of life by biologists would have little utility outside biology because of its necessary inclusiveness. We humans would find ourselves in a class of beings that included the amoeba. ‘Life’ would be the limited common properties of all organisms, including the lowest. Second, the scientific definition of life is necessarily an external one. I think that knowing what life is, as opposed to defining it, requires knowing it from within. Non-sentient organisms live, but they do not know life. Third, in the scientific definition, there is no place for life having value. However, many would say that life has value in its own right – that it is not simply that we humans value life and so give it value, but that it has value intrinsically. Fourth, there is the question of life as a whole having a purpose or goal. This notion is not scientific, but one wonders if the tools of science are fit to detect any evolutionary purpose, if there is one. Fifth, for the scientists, life is a set of biological conditions and processes. However, everywhere and always, people have conceived of a life after biological death, a life of spirit not necessarily dependent on the physical for existence.

The scientific definition of life is valid in its context, but otherwise I find it impoverished. I believe there is a hierarchy of living beings from the non-sentient, to the sentient, to humans, and perhaps up to God. When I ask, ‘What is life? I want to know what life is at its highest form. I believe life at its best is spirit: it is active, sentient, feeling, thinking, purposive, valuing, social, other-respecting, relating, and caring.

John Talley, Rutherfordton, NC

I listen enthralled to scientific debate on what, how, when and where life was created. However, questions remain which may never be resolved. In this vacuum, philosophers and religious thinkers have attempted to give meaning to life by suggesting goals: Plato suggested the acquisition of knowledge, Aristotle to practice virtue, and the Stoics, mental fortitude and self-control. Today’s philosophers echo the existentialist view that life is full of absurdity, although they also tell us that we must put meaning into life by making our own values in an indifferent world. But if life is just a journey from womb to tomb, will such ‘meaning’ be sufficient to allow the traveller at journey’s end to feel that it was worthwhile?

Perhaps the hypothesis upon which Ivan Tyrrell and Joe Griffin have based their therapy could help (see Human Givens , 2003). They describe that we are born with evolved needs that seek satisfaction from our environment. These are physical and emotional needs, which, when enough of them are met, ensure the health of the individual, maximising his or her ability to achieve meaning in life. Griffin and Tyrrell have proven empirically that when sufficient needs are met an individual will enjoy mental and physical health, unless there is damage or toxicity in the environment. Some of these needs were identified by Maslow in his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ in his 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, Psychological Review , 50 (4), but Griffin and Tyrrell focus more clearly on emotional needs such as:

• To achieve, and to feel competent

• To fulfil our sense of autonomy and control

• To be emotionally connected to other people and part of a larger community

• To have a sense of status within social groupings

• For privacy and rest, to reflect and consolidate learning

• And yes – to have meaning in one’s life

Meaning becomes difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if these needs are insufficiently satisfied. Unfortunately, modern society seeks meaning to life through materialism, to the detriment of our biological needs, leading to dissatisfaction and a consequent inability to find meaning. The result is an exponential increase in mental ill-health. Sadly, then, many of us will not experience the satisfaction of a meaningful life journey.

Caryl A. Fuchs, Flecknoe, Warwickshire

Life is the eternal and unbroken flow of infinite rippling simultaneous events that by a fortuitous chain has led to this universe of elements we are all suspended in, that has somehow led to this present experience of sentient existence. Animal life (excluding that of humans) shows that life is a simple matter of being, by means of a modest routine of eating, sleeping and reproducing. Animals balance their days between these necessities, doing only what their bodies ask of them. The life of vegetation is not far from that of animals. They eat and sleep and reproduce in their own way, for the same result. So life is a beautiful and naturally harmonious borrowing of energy.

Yet we have taken it for granted. We have lost the power to simply be happy eating, sleeping, reproducing, believing we need a reason to be alive, a purpose and a goal to reach, so that on our deathbeds (something we have been made to fear) we can look back and tell ourselves we have done something with our lives. Life has lost its purpose because we have tried to give it one. The truth is that we are no more significant than the sand by the sea or the clouds in the sky. No more significant. But as significant.

No matter what your race, religion or gender, when you first step outside your door in the morning and feel the fresh air in your lungs and the morning sun on your face, you close your eyes and smile. In that moment you are feeling life as it should be. No defining, no understanding, no thinking. Just that feeling of pure bliss. For that is what life is.

Courtney Walsh, Farnborough, Hampshire

Of all Webster’s definitions of ‘life’, the one for me that best covers it is, “the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual.” Indeed, life is a continuum of accomplishment, failure, discovery, dilemma, challenge, boredom, sadness, disappointment, appreciation, the giving and receipt of grace, empathy, peace, and our reactions to all sorts of stimuli – touch, love, friendship, loss… One can either merely exist or try to achieve, working through the difficult times, perhaps learning a thing or two. Everyone has a story. I’ve been surprised when learning something new about an acquaintance or friend that must have been very difficult to manage or survive; but there they are in front of me. It’s how you come out on the other side of those challenging times that is important. How you land, get on with it, and keep on truckin’.

Life cannot be planned: there’s fate, and there’s simple bad luck. Failure can bring crushing disappointment, or you can try and make a new plan. A person can waste an inordinate amount of time mourning what they don’t have, or plans that don’t work out. But who wants to waste that much time regretting?

Life has happy surprises, small moments to cherish. It’s a matter of weighing the good and bad times – the challenge is to balance both, ending up with a life looked back on that was worth the mighty effort. I’m not meaning to sound like a Pollyanna – I assure you I’m not – it’s just more pleasant to strive for a modicum of equilibrium. If I can manage that, I’m good.

Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” ( Macbeth , Act V, Scene V)

These words of Shakespeare’s Macbeth summarize interesting ideas about the nature of life. The first line expresses two of the three marks of existence as per Buddhist thinking, Anicca , impermanence, and Anatta , non-self: a “walking shadow” is as insubstantial and impermanent as anything imaginable; a “poor player” neither creates nor directs his role, and the character being played only exists because of an author. Macbeth’s entire statement, particularly the last sentence, expresses the third Buddhist mark of existence: Dukkha , dissatisfaction.

The stage metaphor in the second line represents boundaries or limits. Scientific research into the nature of life often focuses on the material, energetic, and temporal limitations within which life can exist. The temporal limit of life is known as death. In the spirit of this interpretation, the idea of being “heard no more” could imply that life constantly evolves new forms while discarding older ones.

Macbeth hints at the wisdom of mystery traditions while anticipating the revelations of genetic science by stating that life “is a tale”. Now, this refers to the language-based, or code-based, nature of life. Readers may consider this in relation to DNA and RNA, and also in relation to John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (The implications of the phrase “told by an idiot” exceed the scope of this inquiry.)

In five concise and poetic lines, Shakespeare defined life as an impermanent, non-self-directed, unsatisfactory, limited, ever-changing, and ultimately insignificant code.

Devon Hall, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Life is the realisation of its own contingency. But that’s not the end of it; it’s merely the means towards the creation of meaning. Life is thus a constant process of becoming, through creating values and meaning. Life is therefore perpetual transcendence, always moving into the future, creating the present. Life is also acceptance: the acceptance of finitude; acceptance of one’s responsibilities; acceptance of other human beings’ existence and choices. Life is neither fixed nor absolute, it is ambiguous; life is the possibilities entailed by existence. Life is the consciousness of humanity; it is perception of the world and the universe. So life is sadness; life is death. Life is suffering and destruction. But life is also happiness; life is living. Life is joy and creativity. Life is finding a cause to survive, a reason not to die – not yet. It is youth and old age, with everything in between. Overall, life is beautiful – ugliness is fleeting. Corpses and skeletons are lugubrious; living flesh is resplendent, all bodies are statuesque. Human life is love and hate, but it can only be life when we are with others. Life as fear and hatred is not real life at all. For some, life is God. We would all then be His children. We are nevertheless the spawn of the Earth.

Human existence is freedom – an edifice of plurality.

Greg Chatterton, Cupar, Fife

If the ancients could do philosophy in the marketplace, maybe I can too. So I employed some modern technology by texting the question ‘What is Life?’ to all my contacts. I didn’t explain the context of the question, to avoid lyrical waxing. Here are a sample of replies. Life is: being conscious of yourself and others; a being with a soul; experience; what you make it; your chance to be a success; family; living as long as you can; not being dead; greater than the sum of its parts; complex chemical organisation; different things to different people; a mystery; a journey; don’t know; a quote from a song, “baby don’t hurt me”; life begins after death. I asked a regular in my favourite café. They said, “man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” A person suffering from a degenerative disease answered: “life is sh** then you die.” Another with the same illness interviewed in our local newspaper said, “My life is a mission to help other sufferers.” A colleague said “some would want to shoot themselves if they had my life, but I’m happy.” I posed the question at my art club and we did no painting that day…

I was surprised to find that I had no immediate definition of life myself (hence the idea to ask) and that there is no consensus (only one reply was repeated), but then, that also is life.

I sometimes catch myself considering life when I arrive at the turning point on my evening walk. It’s a dark spot which makes stargazing easier, and the heavens are a good place to start, since life as we know it began there (the heavier atoms like carbon which make up our bodies initially formed in dying Red Giant stars). This makes me feel two things about my life: it’s a dot because the cosmos is immense; but it’s an important dot in the cosmos because I can consider it.

Kristine Kerr, Gourock, Renfrewshire

Next Question of the Month

Now we know what life is, the next question is, How Should I Live? Please give and justify your ethical advice in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject lines or envelopes should be marked ‘Question of the Month’, and must be received by 9th June. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your physical address. Submission implies permission to reproduce your answer physically and electronically. Thank you.

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The Meaning of Life

Many major historical figures in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these terms (with such talk having arisen only in the past 250 years or so, on which see Landau 1997). Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. Relatedly, think about Koheleth, the presumed author of the Biblical book Ecclesiastes, describing life as “futility” and akin to “the pursuit of wind,” Nietzsche on nihilism, as well as Schopenhauer when he remarks that whenever we reach a goal we have longed for we discover “how vain and empty it is.” While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and virtue (and their opposites), they are straightforwardly construed (roughly) as accounts of which highly ranked purposes a person ought to realize that would make her life significant (if any would).

Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only since the 1980s or so that a distinct field of the meaning of life has been established in Anglo-American-Australasian philosophy, on which this survey focuses, and it is only in the past 20 years that debate with real depth and intricacy has appeared. Two decades ago analytic reflection on life’s meaning was described as a “backwater” compared to that on well-being or good character, and it was possible to cite nearly all the literature in a given critical discussion of the field (Metz 2002). Neither is true any longer. Anglo-American-Australasian philosophy of life’s meaning has become vibrant, such that there is now way too much literature to be able to cite comprehensively in this survey. To obtain focus, it tends to discuss books, influential essays, and more recent works, and it leaves aside contributions from other philosophical traditions (such as the Continental or African) and from non-philosophical fields (e.g., psychology or literature). This survey’s central aim is to acquaint the reader with current analytic approaches to life’s meaning, sketching major debates and pointing out neglected topics that merit further consideration.

When the topic of the meaning of life comes up, people tend to pose one of three questions: “What are you talking about?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, and “Is life in fact meaningful?”. The literature on life's meaning composed by those working in the analytic tradition (on which this entry focuses) can be usefully organized according to which question it seeks to answer. This survey starts off with recent work that addresses the first, abstract (or “meta”) question regarding the sense of talk of “life’s meaning,” i.e., that aims to clarify what we have in mind when inquiring into the meaning of life (section 1). Afterward, it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive question about the nature of meaningfulness (sections 2–3). There is in the making a sub-field of applied meaning that parallels applied ethics, in which meaningfulness is considered in the context of particular cases or specific themes. Examples include downshifting (Levy 2005), implementing genetic enhancements (Agar 2013), making achievements (Bradford 2015), getting an education (Schinkel et al. 2015), interacting with research participants (Olson 2016), automating labor (Danaher 2017), and creating children (Ferracioli 2018). In contrast, this survey focuses nearly exclusively on contemporary normative-theoretical approaches to life’s meanining, that is, attempts to capture in a single, general principle all the variegated conditions that could confer meaning on life. Finally, this survey examines fresh arguments for the nihilist view that the conditions necessary for a meaningful life do not obtain for any of us, i.e., that all our lives are meaningless (section 4).

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

2.1. god-centered views, 2.2. soul-centered views, 3.1. subjectivism, 3.2. objectivism, 3.3. rejecting god and a soul, 4. nihilism, works cited, classic works, collections, books for the general reader, other internet resources, related entries.

One of the field's aims consists of the systematic attempt to identify what people (essentially or characteristically) have in mind when they think about the topic of life’s meaning. For many in the field, terms such as “importance” and “significance” are synonyms of “meaningfulness” and so are insufficiently revealing, but there are those who draw a distinction between meaningfulness and significance (Singer 1996, 112–18; Belliotti 2019, 145–50, 186). There is also debate about how the concept of a meaningless life relates to the ideas of a life that is absurd (Nagel 1970, 1986, 214–23; Feinberg 1980; Belliotti 2019), futile (Trisel 2002), and not worth living (Landau 2017, 12–15; Matheson 2017).

A useful way to begin to get clear about what thinking about life’s meaning involves is to specify the bearer. Which life does the inquirer have in mind? A standard distinction to draw is between the meaning “in” life, where a human person is what can exhibit meaning, and the meaning “of” life in a narrow sense, where the human species as a whole is what can be meaningful or not. There has also been a bit of recent consideration of whether animals or human infants can have meaning in their lives, with most rejecting that possibility (e.g., Wong 2008, 131, 147; Fischer 2019, 1–24), but a handful of others beginning to make a case for it (Purves and Delon 2018; Thomas 2018). Also under-explored is the issue of whether groups, such as a people or an organization, can be bearers of meaning, and, if so, under what conditions.

Most analytic philosophers have been interested in meaning in life, that is, in the meaningfulness that a person’s life could exhibit, with comparatively few these days addressing the meaning of life in the narrow sense. Even those who believe that God is or would be central to life’s meaning have lately addressed how an individual’s life might be meaningful in virtue of God more often than how the human race might be. Although some have argued that the meaningfulness of human life as such merits inquiry to no less a degree (if not more) than the meaning in a life (Seachris 2013; Tartaglia 2015; cf. Trisel 2016), a large majority of the field has instead been interested in whether their lives as individual persons (and the lives of those they care about) are meaningful and how they could become more so.

Focusing on meaning in life, it is quite common to maintain that it is conceptually something good for its own sake or, relatedly, something that provides a basic reason for action (on which see Visak 2017). There are a few who have recently suggested otherwise, maintaining that there can be neutral or even undesirable kinds of meaning in a person’s life (e.g., Mawson 2016, 90, 193; Thomas 2018, 291, 294). However, these are outliers, with most analytic philosophers, and presumably laypeople, instead wanting to know when an individual’s life exhibits a certain kind of final value (or non-instrumental reason for action).

Another claim about which there is substantial consensus is that meaningfulness is not all or nothing and instead comes in degrees, such that some periods of life are more meaningful than others and that some lives as a whole are more meaningful than others. Note that one can coherently hold the view that some people’s lives are less meaningful (or even in a certain sense less “important”) than others, or are even meaningless (unimportant), and still maintain that people have an equal standing from a moral point of view. Consider a consequentialist moral principle according to which each individual counts for one in virtue of having a capacity for a meaningful life, or a Kantian approach according to which all people have a dignity in virtue of their capacity for autonomous decision-making, where meaning is a function of the exercise of this capacity. For both moral outlooks, we could be required to help people with relatively meaningless lives.

Yet another relatively uncontroversial element of the concept of meaningfulness in respect of individual persons is that it is logically distinct from happiness or rightness (emphasized in Wolf 2010, 2016). First, to ask whether someone’s life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is pleasant or she is subjectively well off. A life in an experience machine or virtual reality device would surely be a happy one, but very few take it to be a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness (Nozick 1974: 42–45). Indeed, a number would say that one’s life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one’s well-being, e.g., by helping others at the expense of one’s self-interest. Second, asking whether a person’s existence over time is meaningful is not identical to considering whether she has been morally upright; there are intuitively ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do with right action or moral virtue, such as making a scientific discovery or becoming an excellent dancer. Now, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if, or even because, it were unhappy or immoral, but that would be to posit a synthetic, substantive relationship between the concepts, far from indicating that speaking of “meaningfulness” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding happiness or rightness. The question of what (if anything) makes a person’s life meaningful is conceptually distinct from the questions of what makes a life happy or moral, although it could turn out that the best answer to the former question appeals to an answer to one of the latter questions.

Supposing, then, that talk of “meaning in life” connotes something good for its own sake that can come in degrees and that is not analytically equivalent to happiness or rightness, what else does it involve? What more can we say about this final value, by definition? Most contemporary analytic philosophers would say that the relevant value is absent from spending time in an experience machine (but see Goetz 2012 for a different view) or living akin to Sisyphus, the mythic figure doomed by the Greek gods to roll a stone up a hill for eternity (famously discussed by Albert Camus and Taylor 1970). In addition, many would say that the relevant value is typified by the classic triad of “the good, the true, and the beautiful” (or would be under certain conditions). These terms are not to be taken literally, but instead are rough catchwords for beneficent relationships (love, collegiality, morality), intellectual reflection (wisdom, education, discoveries), and creativity (particularly the arts, but also potentially things like humor or gardening).

Pressing further, is there something that the values of the good, the true, the beautiful, and any other logically possible sources of meaning involve? There is as yet no consensus in the field. One salient view is that the concept of meaning in life is a cluster or amalgam of overlapping ideas, such as fulfilling higher-order purposes, meriting substantial esteem or admiration, having a noteworthy impact, transcending one’s animal nature, making sense, or exhibiting a compelling life-story (Markus 2003; Thomson 2003; Metz 2013, 24–35; Seachris 2013, 3–4; Mawson 2016). However, there are philosophers who maintain that something much more monistic is true of the concept, so that (nearly) all thought about meaningfulness in a person’s life is essentially about a single property. Suggestions include being devoted to or in awe of qualitatively superior goods (Taylor 1989, 3–24), transcending one’s limits (Levy 2005), or making a contribution (Martela 2016).

Recently there has been something of an “interpretive turn” in the field, one instance of which is the strong view that meaning-talk is logically about whether and how a life is intelligible within a wider frame of reference (Goldman 2018, 116–29; Seachris 2019; Thomas 2019; cf. Repp 2018). According to this approach, inquiring into life’s meaning is nothing other than seeking out sense-making information, perhaps a narrative about life or an explanation of its source and destiny. This analysis has the advantage of promising to unify a wide array of uses of the term “meaning.” However, it has the disadvantages of being unable to capture the intuitions that meaning in life is essentially good for its own sake (Landau 2017, 12–15), that it is not logically contradictory to maintain that an ineffable condition is what confers meaning on life (as per Cooper 2003, 126–42; Bennett-Hunter 2014; Waghorn 2014), and that often human actions themselves (as distinct from an interpretation of them), such as rescuing a child from a burning building, are what bear meaning.

Some thinkers have suggested that a complete analysis of the concept of life’s meaning should include what has been called “anti-matter” (Metz 2002, 805–07, 2013, 63–65, 71–73) or “anti-meaning” (Campbell and Nyholm 2015; Egerstrom 2015), conditions that reduce the meaningfulness of a life. The thought is that meaning is well represented by a bipolar scale, where there is a dimension of not merely positive conditions, but also negative ones. Gratuitous cruelty or destructiveness are prima facie candidates for actions that not merely fail to add meaning, but also subtract from any meaning one’s life might have had.

Despite the ongoing debates about how to analyze the concept of life’s meaning (or articulate the definition of the phrase “meaning in life”), the field remains in a good position to make progress on the other key questions posed above, viz., of what would make a life meaningful and whether any lives are in fact meaningful. A certain amount of common ground is provided by the point that meaningfulness at least involves a gradient final value in a person’s life that is conceptually distinct from happiness and rightness, with exemplars of it potentially being the good, the true, and the beautiful. The rest of this discussion addresses philosophical attempts to capture the nature of this value theoretically and to ascertain whether it exists in at least some of our lives.

2. Supernaturalism

Most analytic philosophers writing on meaning in life have been trying to develop and evaluate theories, i.e., fundamental and general principles, that are meant to capture all the particular ways that a life could obtain meaning. As in moral philosophy, there are recognizable “anti-theorists,” i.e., those who maintain that there is too much pluralism among meaning conditions to be able to unify them in the form of a principle (e.g., Kekes 2000; Hosseini 2015). Arguably, though, the systematic search for unity is too nascent to be able to draw a firm conclusion about whether it is available.

The theories are standardly divided on a metaphysical basis, that is, in terms of which kinds of properties are held to constitute the meaning. Supernaturalist theories are views according to which a spiritual realm is central to meaning in life. Most Western philosophers have conceived of the spiritual in terms of God or a soul as commonly understood in the Abrahamic faiths (but see Mulgan 2015 for discussion of meaning in the context of a God uninterested in us). In contrast, naturalist theories are views that the physical world as known particularly well by the scientific method is central to life’s meaning.

There is logical space for a non-naturalist theory, according to which central to meaning is an abstract property that is neither spiritual nor physical. However, only scant attention has been paid to this possibility in the recent Anglo-American-Australasian literature (Audi 2005).

It is important to note that supernaturalism, a claim that God (or a soul) would confer meaning on a life, is logically distinct from theism, the claim that God (or a soul) exists. Although most who hold supernaturalism also hold theism, one could accept the former without the latter (as Camus more or less did), committing one to the view that life is meaningless or at least lacks substantial meaning. Similarly, while most naturalists are atheists, it is not contradictory to maintain that God exists but has nothing to do with meaning in life or perhaps even detracts from it. Although these combinations of positions are logically possible, some of them might be substantively implausible. The field could benefit from discussion of the comparative attractiveness of various combinations of evaluative claims about what would make life meaningful and metaphysical claims about whether spiritual conditions exist.

Over the past 15 years or so, two different types of supernaturalism have become distinguished on a regular basis (Metz 2019). That is true not only in the literature on life’s meaning, but also in that on the related pro-theism/anti-theism debate, about whether it would be desirable for God or a soul to exist (e.g., Kahane 2011; Kraay 2018; Lougheed 2020). On the one hand, there is extreme supernaturalism, according to which spiritual conditions are necessary for any meaning in life. If neither God nor a soul exists, then, by this view, everyone’s life is meaningless. On the other hand, there is moderate supernaturalism, according to which spiritual conditions are necessary for a great or ultimate meaning in life, although not meaning in life as such. If neither God nor a soul exists, then, by this view, everyone’s life could have some meaning, or even be meaningful, but no one’s life could exhibit the most desirable meaning. For a moderate supernaturalist, God or a soul would substantially enhance meaningfulness or be a major contributory condition for it.

There are a variety of ways that great or ultimate meaning has been described, sometimes quantitatively as “infinite” (Mawson 2016), qualitatively as “deeper” (Swinburne 2016), relationally as “unlimited” (Nozick 1981, 618–19; cf. Waghorn 2014), temporally as “eternal” (Cottingham 2016), and perspectivally as “from the point of view of the universe” (Benatar 2017). There has been no reflection as yet on the crucial question of how these distinctions might bear on each another, for instance, on whether some are more basic than others or some are more valuable than others.

Cross-cutting the extreme/moderate distinction is one between God-centered theories and soul-centered ones. According to the former, some kind of connection with God (understood to be a spiritual person who is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful and who is the ground of the physical universe) constitutes meaning in life, even if one lacks a soul (construed as an immortal, spiritual substance that contains one’s identity). In contrast, by the latter, having a soul and putting it into a certain state is what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist. Many supernaturalists of course believe that God and a soul are jointly necessary for a (greatly) meaningful existence. However, the simpler view, that only one of them is necessary, is common, and sometimes arguments proffered for the complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler one.

The most influential God-based account of meaning in life has been the extreme view that one’s existence is significant if and only if one fulfills a purpose God has assigned. The familiar idea is that God has a plan for the universe and that one’s life is meaningful just to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in a particular way that God wants one to do so. If a person failed to do what God intends her to do with her life (or if God does not even exist), then, on the current view, her life would be meaningless.

Thinkers differ over what it is about God’s purpose that might make it uniquely able to confer meaning on human lives, but the most influential argument has been that only God’s purpose could be the source of invariant moral rules (Davis 1987, 296, 304–05; Moreland 1987, 124–29; Craig 1994/2013, 161–67) or of objective values more generally (Cottingham 2005, 37–57), where a lack of such would render our lives nonsensical. According to this argument, lower goods such as animal pleasure or desire satisfaction could exist without God, but higher ones pertaining to meaning in life, particularly moral virtue, could not. However, critics point to many non-moral sources of meaning in life (e.g., Kekes 2000; Wolf 2010), with one arguing that a universal moral code is not necessary for meaning in life, even if, say, beneficent actions are (Ellin 1995, 327). In addition, there are a variety of naturalist and non-naturalist accounts of objective morality––and of value more generally––on offer these days, so that it is not clear that it must have a supernatural source in God’s will.

One recurrent objection to the idea that God’s purpose could make life meaningful is that if God had created us with a purpose in mind, then God would have degraded us and thereby undercut the possibility of us obtaining meaning from fulfilling the purpose. The objection harks back to Jean-Paul Sartre, but in the analytic literature it appears that Kurt Baier was the first to articulate it (1957/2000, 118–20; see also Murphy 1982, 14–15; Singer 1996, 29; Kahane 2011; Lougheed 2020, 121–41). Sometimes the concern is the threat of punishment God would make so that we do God’s bidding, while other times it is that the source of meaning would be constrictive and not up to us, and still other times it is that our dignity would be maligned simply by having been created with a certain end in mind (for some replies to such concerns, see Hanfling 1987, 45–46; Cottingham 2005, 37–57; Lougheed 2020, 111–21).

There is a different argument for an extreme God-based view that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as infinite, unlimited, or ineffable, which Robert Nozick first articulated with care (Nozick 1981, 594–618; see also Bennett-Hunter 2014; Waghorn 2014). The core idea is that for a finite condition to be meaningful, it must obtain its meaning from another condition that has meaning. So, if one’s life is meaningful, it might be so in virtue of being married to a person, who is important. Being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does. This work also must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful conditions is present, and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something so all-encompassing that it need not (indeed, cannot) go beyond itself to obtain meaning from anything else. And that is God. The standard objection to this relational rationale is that a finite condition could be meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition. Perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, without being connected to something beyond it, or maybe it could obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is beautiful or otherwise valuable for its own sake but not meaningful (Nozick 1989, 167–68; Thomson 2003, 25–26, 48).

A serious concern for any extreme God-based view is the existence of apparent counterexamples. If we think of the stereotypical lives of Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Pablo Picasso, they seem meaningful even if we suppose there is no all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good spiritual person who is the ground of the physical world (e.g., Wielenberg 2005, 31–37, 49–50; Landau 2017). Even religiously inclined philosophers have found this hard to deny these days (Quinn 2000, 58; Audi 2005; Mawson 2016, 5; Williams 2020, 132–34).

Largely for that reason, contemporary supernaturalists have tended to opt for moderation, that is, to maintain that God would greatly enhance the meaning in our lives, even if some meaning would be possible in a world without God. One approach is to invoke the relational argument to show that God is necessary, not for any meaning whatsoever, but rather for an ultimate meaning. “Limited transcendence, the transcending of our limits so as to connect with a wider context of value which itself is limited, does give our lives meaning––but a limited one. We may thirst for more” (Nozick 1981, 618). Another angle is to appeal to playing a role in God’s plan, again to claim, not that it is essential for meaning as such, but rather for “a cosmic significance....intead of a significance very limited in time and space” (Swinburne 2016, 154; see also Quinn 2000; Cottingham 2016, 131). Another rationale is that by fulfilling God’s purpose, we would meaningfully please God, a perfect person, as well as be remembered favorably by God forever (Cottingham 2016, 135; Williams 2020, 21–22, 29, 101, 108). Still another argument is that only with God could the deepest desires of human nature be satisfied (e.g., Goetz 2012; Seachris 2013, 20; Cottingham 2016, 127, 136), even if more surface desires could be satisfied without God.

In reply to such rationales for a moderate supernaturalism, there has been the suggestion that it is precisely by virtue of being alone in the universe that our lives would be particularly significant; otherwise, God’s greatness would overshadow us (Kahane 2014). There has also been the response that, with the opportunity for greater meaning from God would also come that for greater anti-meaning, so that it is not clear that a world with God would offer a net gain in respect of meaning (Metz 2019, 34–35). For example, if pleasing God would greatly enhance meaning in our lives, then presumably displeasing God would greatly reduce it and to a comparable degree. In addition, there are arguments for extreme naturalism (or its “anti-theist” cousin) mentioned below (sub-section 3.3).

Notice that none of the above arguments for supernaturalism appeals to the prospect of eternal life (at least not explicitly). Arguments that do make such an appeal are soul-centered, holding that meaning in life mainly comes from having an immortal, spiritual substance that is contiguous with one’s body when it is alive and that will forever outlive its death. Some think of the afterlife in terms of one’s soul entering a transcendent, spiritual realm (Heaven), while others conceive of one’s soul getting reincarnated into another body on Earth. According to the extreme version, if one has a soul but fails to put it in the right state (or if one lacks a soul altogether), then one’s life is meaningless.

There are three prominent arguments for an extreme soul-based perspective. One argument, made famous by Leo Tolstoy, is the suggestion that for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that something is worth doing only if it will make a permanent difference to the world, and that making a permanent difference requires being immortal (see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Morris 1992, 26; Craig 1994). Critics most often appeal to counterexamples, suggesting for instance that it is surely worth your time and effort to help prevent people from suffering, even if you and they are mortal. Indeed, some have gone on the offensive and argued that helping people is worth the sacrifice only if and because they are mortal, for otherwise they could invariably be compensated in an afterlife (e.g., Wielenberg 2005, 91–94). Another recent and interesting criticism is that the major motivations for the claim that nothing matters now if one day it will end are incoherent (Greene 2021).

A second argument for the view that life would be meaningless without a soul is that it is necessary for justice to be done, which, in turn, is necessary for a meaningful life. Life seems nonsensical when the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer, at least supposing there is no other world in which these injustices will be rectified, whether by God or a Karmic force. Something like this argument can be found in Ecclesiastes, and it continues to be defended (e.g., Davis 1987; Craig 1994). However, even granting that an afterlife is required for perfectly just outcomes, it is far from obvious that an eternal afterlife is necessary for them, and, then, there is the suggestion that some lives, such as Mandela’s, have been meaningful precisely in virtue of encountering injustice and fighting it.

A third argument for thinking that having a soul is essential for any meaning is that it is required to have the sort of free will without which our lives would be meaningless. Immanuel Kant is known for having maintained that if we were merely physical beings, subjected to the laws of nature like everything else in the material world, then we could not act for moral reasons and hence would be unimportant. More recently, one theologian has eloquently put the point in religious terms: “The moral spirit finds the meaning of life in choice. It finds it in that which proceeds from man and remains with him as his inner essence rather than in the accidents of circumstances turns of external fortune....(W)henever a human being rubs the lamp of his moral conscience, a Spirit does appear. This Spirit is God....It is in the ‘Thou must’ of God and man’s ‘I can’ that the divine image of God in human life is contained” (Swenson 1949/2000, 27–28). Notice that, even if moral norms did not spring from God’s commands, the logic of the argument entails that one’s life could be meaningful, so long as one had the inherent ability to make the morally correct choice in any situation. That, in turn, arguably requires something non-physical about one’s self, so as to be able to overcome whichever physical laws and forces one might confront. The standard objection to this reasoning is to advance a compatibilism about having a determined physical nature and being able to act for moral reasons (e.g., Arpaly 2006; Fischer 2009, 145–77). It is also worth wondering whether, if one had to have a spiritual essence in order to make free choices, it would have to be one that never perished.

Like God-centered theorists, many soul-centered theorists these days advance a moderate view, accepting that some meaning in life would be possible without immortality, but arguing that a much greater meaning would be possible with it. Granting that Einstein, Mandela, and Picasso had somewhat meaningful lives despite not having survived the deaths of their bodies (as per, e.g., Trisel 2004; Wolf 2015, 89–140; Landau 2017), there remains a powerful thought: more is better. If a finite life with the good, the true, and the beautiful has meaning in it to some degree, then surely it would have all the more meaning if it exhibited such higher values––including a relationship with God––for an eternity (Cottingham 2016, 132–35; Mawson 2016, 2019, 52–53; Williams 2020, 112–34; cf. Benatar 2017, 35–63). One objection to this reasoning is that the infinity of meaning that would be possible with a soul would be “too big,” rendering it difficult for the moderate supernaturalist to make sense of the intution that a finite life such as Einstein’s can indeed count as meaningful by comparison (Metz 2019, 30–31; cf. Mawson 2019, 53–54). More common, though, is the objection that an eternal life would include anti-meaning of various kinds, such as boredom and repetition, discussed below in the context of extreme naturalism (sub-section 3.3).

3. Naturalism

Recall that naturalism is the view that a physical life is central to life’s meaning, that even if there is no spiritual realm, a substantially meaningful life is possible. Like supernaturalism, contemporary naturalism admits of two distinguishable variants, moderate and extreme (Metz 2019). The moderate version is that, while a genuinely meaningful life could be had in a purely physical universe as known well by science, a somewhat more meaningful life would be possible if a spiritual realm also existed. God or a soul could enhance meaning in life, although they would not be major contributors. The extreme version of naturalism is the view that it would be better in respect of life’s meaning if there were no spiritual realm. From this perspective, God or a soul would be anti-matter, i.e., would detract from the meaning available to us, making a purely physical world (even if not this particular one) preferable.

Cross-cutting the moderate/extreme distinction is that between subjectivism and objectivism, which are theoretical accounts of the nature of meaningfulness insofar as it is physical. They differ in terms of the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are conditions of meaning that are invariant among human beings. Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subject, i.e., depends on an individual’s pro-attitudes such as her particular desires or ends, which are not shared by everyone. Roughly, something is meaningful for a person if she strongly wants it or intends to seek it out and she gets it. Objectivists maintain, in contrast, that there are some invariant standards for meaning because meaning is at least partly mind-independent, i.e., obtains not merely in virtue of being the object of anyone’s mental states. Here, something is meaningful (partially) because of its intrinsic nature, in the sense of being independent of whether it is wanted or intended; meaning is instead (to some extent) the sort of thing that merits these reactions.

There is logical space for an orthogonal view, according to which there are invariant standards of meaningfulness constituted by what all human beings would converge on from a certain standpoint. However, it has not been much of a player in the field (Darwall 1983, 164–66).

According to this version of naturalism, meaning in life varies from person to person, depending on each one’s variable pro-attitudes. Common instances are views that one’s life is more meaningful, the more one gets what one happens to want strongly, achieves one’s highly ranked goals, or does what one believes to be really important (Trisel 2002; Hooker 2008). One influential subjectivist has recently maintained that the relevant mental state is caring or loving, so that life is meaningful just to the extent that one cares about or loves something (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94, 2004). Another recent proposal is that meaningfulness consists of “an active engagement and affirmation that vivifies the person who has freely created or accepted and now promotes and nurtures the projects of her highest concern” (Belliotti 2019, 183).

Subjectivism was dominant in the middle of the twentieth century, when positivism, noncognitivism, existentialism, and Humeanism were influential (Ayer 1947; Hare 1957; Barnes 1967; Taylor 1970; Williams 1976). However, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, inference to the best explanation and reflective equilibrium became accepted forms of normative argumentation and were frequently used to defend claims about the existence and nature of objective value (or of “external reasons,” ones obtaining independently of one’s extant attitudes). As a result, subjectivism about meaning lost its dominance. Those who continue to hold subjectivism often remain suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value (e.g., Trisel 2002, 73, 79, 2004, 378–79; Frankfurt 2004, 47–48, 55–57; Wong 2008, 138–39; Evers 2017, 32, 36; Svensson 2017, 54). Theorists are moved to accept subjectivism typically because the alternatives are unpalatable; they are reasonably sure that meaning in life obtains for some people, but do not see how it could be grounded on something independent of the mind, whether it be the natural or the supernatural (or the non-natural). In contrast to these possibilities, it appears straightforward to account for what is meaningful in terms of what people find meaningful or what people want out of their lives. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to address this rationale for subjectivism.

There is a cluster of other, more circumscribed arguments for subjectivism, according to which this theory best explains certain intuitive features of meaning in life. For one, subjectivism seems plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an authentic one (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94). If a person’s life is significant insofar as she is true to herself or her deepest nature, then we have some reason to believe that meaning simply is a function of those matters for which the person cares. For another, it is uncontroversial that often meaning comes from losing oneself, i.e., in becoming absorbed in an activity or experience, as opposed to being bored by it or finding it frustrating (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94; Belliotti 2019, 162–70). Work that concentrates the mind and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so because of the subjective elements involved. For a third, meaning is often taken to be something that makes life worth continuing for a specific person, i.e., that gives her a reason to get out of bed in the morning, which subjectivism is thought to account for best (Williams 1976; Svensson 2017; Calhoun 2018).

Critics maintain that these arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of objective value (or an external reason) in realizing oneself, losing oneself, and having a reason to live (Taylor 1989, 1992; Wolf 2010, 2015, 89–140). One is not really being true to oneself, losing oneself in a meaningful way, or having a genuine reason to live insofar as one, say, successfully maintains 3,732 hairs on one’s head (Taylor 1992, 36), cultivates one’s prowess at long-distance spitting (Wolf 2010, 104), collects a big ball of string (Wolf 2010, 104), or, well, eats one’s own excrement (Wielenberg 2005, 22). The counterexamples suggest that subjective conditions are insufficient to ground meaning in life; there seem to be certain actions, relationships, and states that are objectively valuable (but see Evers 2017, 30–32) and toward which one’s pro-attitudes ought to be oriented, if meaning is to accrue.

So say objectivists, but subjectivists feel the pull of the point and usually seek to avoid the counterexamples, lest they have to bite the bullet by accepting the meaningfulness of maintaining 3,732 hairs on one’s head and all the rest (for some who do, see Svensson 2017, 54–55; Belliotti 2019, 181–83). One important strategy is to suggest that subjectivists can avoid the counterexamples by appealing to the right sort of pro-attitude. Instead of whatever an individual happens to want, perhaps the relevant mental state is an emotional-perceptual one of seeing-as (Alexis 2011; cf. Hosseini 2015, 47–66), a “categorical” desire, that is, an intrinsic desire constitutive of one’s identity that one takes to make life worth continuing (Svensson 2017), or a judgment that one has a good reason to value something highly for its own sake (Calhoun 2018). Even here, though, objectivists will argue that it might “appear that whatever the will chooses to treat as a good reason to engage itself is, for the will, a good reason. But the will itself....craves objective reasons; and often it could not go forward unless it thought it had them” (Wiggins 1988, 136). And without any appeal to objectivity, it is perhaps likely that counterexamples would resurface.

Another subjectivist strategy by which to deal with the counterexamples is the attempt to ground meaningfulness, not on the pro-attitudes of an individual valuer, but on those of a group (Darwall 1983, 164–66; Brogaard and Smith 2005; Wong 2008). Does such an intersubjective move avoid (more of) the counterexamples? If so, does it do so more plausibly than an objective theory?

Objective naturalists believe that meaning in life is constituted at least in part by something physical beyond merely the fact that it is the object of a pro-attitude. Obtaining the object of some emotion, desire, or judgment is not sufficient for meaningfulness, on this view. Instead, there are certain conditions of the material world that could confer meaning on anyone’s life, not merely because they are viewed as meaningful, wanted for their own sake, or believed to be choiceworthy, but instead (at least partially) because they are inherently worthwhile or valuable in themselves.

Morality (the good), enquiry (the true), and creativity (the beautiful) are widely held instances of activities that confer meaning on life, while trimming toenails and eating snow––along with the counterexamples to subjectivism above––are not. Objectivism is widely thought to be a powerful general explanation of these particular judgments: the former are meaningful not merely because some agent (whether it is an individual, her society, or even God) cares about them or judges them to be worth doing, while the latter simply lack significance and cannot obtain it even if some agent does care about them or judge them to be worth doing. From an objective perspective, it is possible for an individual to care about the wrong thing or to be mistaken that something is worthwhile, and not merely because of something she cares about all the more or judges to be still more choiceworthy. Of course, meta-ethical debates about the existence and nature of value are again relevant to appraising this rationale.

Some objectivists think that being the object of a person’s mental states plays no constitutive role in making that person’s life meaningful, although they of course contend that it often plays an instrumental role––liking a certain activity, after all, is likely to motivate one to do it. Relatively few objectivists are “pure” in that way, although consequentialists do stand out as clear instances (e.g., Singer 1995; Smuts 2018, 75–99). Most objectivists instead try to account for the above intuitions driving subjectivism by holding that a life is more meaningful, not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because of propositional attitudes such as cognition, conation, and emotion. Particularly influential has been Susan Wolf’s hybrid view, captured by this pithy slogan: “Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf 2015, 112; see also Kekes 1986, 2000; Wiggins 1988; Raz 2001, 10–40; Mintoff 2008; Wolf 2010, 2016; Fischer 2019, 9–23; Belshaw 2021, 160–81). This theory implies that no meaning accrues to one’s life if one believes in, is satisfied by, or cares about a project that is not truly worthwhile, or if one takes up a truly worthwhile project but fails to judge it important, be satisfied by it, or care about it. A related approach is that, while subjective attraction is not necessary for meaning, it could enhance it (e.g., Audi 2005, 344; Metz 2013, 183–84, 196–98, 220–25). For instance, a stereotypical Mother Teresa who is bored by and alienated from her substantial charity work might have a somewhat significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more significant existence if she felt pride in it or identified with it.

There have been several attempts to capture theoretically what all objectively attractive, inherently worthwhile, or finally valuable conditions have in common insofar as they bear on meaning in a person’s life. Over the past few decades, one encounters the proposals that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that involve: positively connecting with organic unity beyond oneself (Nozick 1981, 594–619); being creative (Taylor 1987; Matheson 2018); living an emotional life (Solomon 1993; cf. Williams 2020, 56–78); promoting good consequences, such as improving the quality of life of oneself and others (Singer 1995; Audi 2005; Smuts 2018, 75–99); exercising or fostering rational nature in exceptional ways (Smith 1997, 179–221; Gewirth 1998, 177–82; Metz 2013, 222–36); progressing toward ends that can never be fully realized because one’s knowledge of them changes as one approaches them (Levy 2005); realizing goals that are transcendent for being long-lasting in duration and broad in scope (Mintoff 2008); living virtuously (May 2015, 61–138; McPherson 2020); and loving what is worth loving (Wolf 2016). There is as yet no convergence in the field on one, or even a small cluster, of these accounts.

One feature of a large majority of the above naturalist theories is that they are aggregative or additive, objectionably treating a life as a mere “container” of bits of life that are meaningful considered in isolation from other bits (Brännmark 2003, 330). It has become increasingly common for philosophers of life’s meaning, especially objectivists, to hold that life as a whole, or at least long stretches of it, can substantially affect its meaningfulness beyond the amount of meaning (if any) in its parts.

For instance, a life that has lots of beneficence and otherwise intuitively meaning-conferring conditions but that is also extremely repetitive (à la the movie Groundhog Day ) is less than maximally meaningful (Taylor 1987; Blumenfeld 2009). Furthermore, a life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount of meaningful (or otherwise desirable) parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the same amount of meaningful (desirable) parts but ends with few or none of them (Kamm 2013, 18–22; Dorsey 2015). Still more, a life in which its meaningless (or otherwise undesirable parts) cause its meaningful (desirable) parts to come about through a process of personal growth seems meaningful in virtue of this redemptive pattern, “good life-story,” or narrative self-expression (Taylor 1989, 48–51; Wong 2008; Fischer 2009, 145–77; Kauppinen 2012; May 2015, 61–138; Velleman 2015, 141–73). These three cases suggest that meaning can inhere in life as a whole, that is, in the relationships between its parts, and not merely in the parts considered in isolation. However, some would maintain that it is, strictly speaking, the story that is or could be told of a life that matters, not so much the life-story qua relations between events themselves (de Bres 2018).

There are pure or extreme versions of holism present in the literature, according to which the only possible bearer of meaning in life is a person’s life as a whole, and not any isolated activities, relationships, or states (Taylor 1989, 48–51; Tabensky 2003; Levinson 2004). A salient argument for this position is that judgments of the meaningfulness of a part of someone’s life are merely provisional, open to revision upon considering how they fit into a wider perspective. So, for example, it would initially appear that taking an ax away from a madman and thereby protecting innocent parties confers some meaning on one’s life, but one might well revise that judgment upon learning that the intention behind it was merely to steal an ax, not to save lives, or that the madman then took out a machine gun, causing much more harm than his ax would have. It is worth considering how far this sort of case is generalizable, and, if it can be to a substantial extent, whether that provides strong evidence that only life as a whole can exhibit meaningfulness.

Perhaps most objectivists would, at least upon reflection, accept that both the parts of a life and the whole-life relationships among the parts can exhibit meaning. Supposing there are two bearers of meaning in a life, important questions arise. One is whether a certain narrative can be meaningful even if its parts are not, while a second is whether the meaningfulness of a part increases if it is an aspect of a meaningful whole (on which see Brännmark 2003), and a third is whether there is anything revealing to say about how to make tradeoffs between the parts and whole in cases where one must choose between them (Blumenfeld 2009 appears to assign lexical priority to the whole).

Naturalists until recently had been largely concerned to show that meaning in life is possible without God or a soul; they have not spent much time considering how such spiritual conditions might enhance meaning, but have, in moderate fashion, tended to leave that possibility open (an exception is Hooker 2008). Lately, however, an extreme form of naturalism has arisen, according to which our lives would probably, if not unavoidably, have less meaning in a world with God or a soul than in one without. Although such an approach was voiced early on by Baier (1957), it is really in the past decade or so that this “anti-theist” position has become widely and intricately discussed.

One rationale, mentioned above as an objection to the view that God’s purpose constitutes meaning in life, has also been deployed to argue that the existence of God as such would necessarily reduce meaning, that is, would consist of anti-matter. It is the idea that master/servant and parent/child analogies so prominent in the monotheist religious traditions reveal something about our status in a world where there is a qualitatively higher being who has created us with certain ends in mind: our independence or dignity as adult persons would be violated (e.g., Baier 1957/2000, 118–20; Kahane 2011, 681–85; Lougheed 2020, 121–41). One interesting objection to this reasoning has been to accept that God’s existence is necessarily incompatible with the sort of meaning that would come (roughly stated) from being one’s own boss, but to argue that God would also make greater sorts of meaning available, offering a net gain to us (Mawson 2016, 110–58).

Another salient argument for thinking that God would detract from meaning in life appeals to the value of privacy (Kahane 2011, 681–85; Lougheed 2020, 55–110). God’s omniscience would unavoidably make it impossible for us to control another person’s access to the most intimate details about ourselves, which, for some, amounts to a less meaningful life than one with such control. Beyond questioning the value of our privacy in relation to God, one thought-provoking criticism has been to suggest that, if a lack of privacy really would substantially reduce meaning in our lives, then God, qua morally perfect person, would simply avoid knowing everything about us (Tooley 2018). Lacking complete knowledge of our mental states would be compatible with describing God as “omniscient,” so the criticism goes, insofar as that is plausibly understood as having as much knowledge as is morally permissible.

Turn, now, to major arguments for thinking that having a soul would reduce life’s meaning, so that if one wants a maximally meaningful life, one should prefer a purely physical world, or at least one in which people are mortal. First and foremost, there has been the argument that an immortal life could not avoid becoming boring (Williams 1973), rendering life pointless according to many subjective and objective theories. The literature on this topic has become enormous, with the central reply being that immortality need not get boring (for more recent discussions, see Fischer 2009, 79–101, 2019, 117–42; Mawson 2019, 51–52; Williams 2020, 30–41, 123–29; Belshaw 2021, 182–97). However, it might also be worth questioning whether boredom is sufficient for meaninglessness. Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others will not be bored; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make. Being bored for an eternity would not be blissful or even satisfying, to be sure, but if it served the function of preventing others from being bored for an eternity, would it be meaningful (at least to some degree)? If, as is commonly held, sacrificing one’s life could be meaningful, why not also sacrificing one’s liveliness?

Another reason given to reject eternal life is that it would become repetitive, which would substantially drain it of meaning (Scarre 2007, 54–55; May 2009, 46–47, 64–65, 71; Smuts 2011, 142–44; cf. Blumenfeld 2009). If, as it appears, there are only a finite number of actions one could perform, relationships one could have, and states one could be in during an eternity, one would have to end up doing the same things again. Even though one’s activities might be more valuable than rolling a stone up a hill forever à la Sisyphus, the prospect of doing them over and over again forever is disheartening for many. To be sure, one might not remember having done them before and hence could avoid boredom, but for some philosophers that would make it all the worse, akin to having dementia and forgetting that one has told the same stories. Others, however, still find meaning in such a life (e.g., Belshaw 2021, 197, 205n41).

A third meaning-based argument against immortality invokes considerations of narrative. If the pattern of one’s life as a whole substantially matters, and if a proper pattern would include a beginning, a middle, and an end, it appears that a life that never ends would lack the relevant narrative structure. “Because it would drag on endlessly, it would, sooner or later, just be a string of events lacking all form....With immortality, the novel never ends....How meaningful can such a novel be?” (May 2009, 68, 72; see also Scarre 2007, 58–60). Notice that this objection is distinct from considerations of boredom and repetition (which concern novelty ); even if one were stimulated and active, and even if one found a way not to repeat one’s life in the course of eternity, an immortal life would appear to lack shape. In reply, some reject the idea that a meaningful life must be akin to a novel, and intead opt for narrativity in the form of something like a string of short stories that build on each other (Fischer 2009, 145–77, 2019, 101–16). Others, though, have sought to show that eternity could still be novel-like, deeming the sort of ending that matters to be a function of what the content is and how it relates to the content that came before (e.g., Seachris 2011; Williams 2020, 112–19).

There have been additional objections to immortality as undercutting meaningfulness, but they are prima facie less powerful than the previous three in that, if sound, they arguably show that an eternal life would have a cost, but probably not one that would utterly occlude the prospect of meaning in it. For example, there have been the suggestions that eternal lives would lack a sense of preciousness and urgency (Nussbaum 1989, 339; Kass 2002, 266–67), could not exemplify virtues such as courageously risking one’s life for others (Kass 2002, 267–68; Wielenberg 2005, 91–94), and could not obtain meaning from sustaining or saving others’ lives (Nussbaum 1989, 338; Wielenberg 2005, 91–94). Note that at least the first two rationales turn substantially on the belief in immortality, not quite immortality itself: if one were immortal but forgot that one is or did not know that at all, then one could appreciate life and obtain much of the virtue of courage (and, conversely, if one were not immortal, but thought that one is, then, by the logic of these arguments, one would fail to appreciate limits and be unable to exemplify courage).

The previous two sections addressed theoretical accounts of what would confer meaning on a human person’s life. Although these theories do not imply that some people’s lives are in fact meaningful, that has been the presumption of a very large majority of those who have advanced them. Much of the procedure has been to suppose that many lives have had meaning in them and then to consider in virtue of what they have or otherwise could. However, there are nihilist (or pessimist) perspectives that question this supposition. According to nihilism (pessimism), what would make a life meaningful in principle cannot obtain for any of us.

One straightforward rationale for nihilism is the combination of extreme supernaturalism about what makes life meaningful and atheism about whether a spiritual realm exists. If you believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither is real, then you are committed to nihilism, to the denial that life can have any meaning. Athough this rationale for nihilism was prominent in the modern era (and was more or less Camus’ position), it has been on the wane in analytic philosophical circles, as extreme supernaturalism has been eclipsed by the moderate variety.

The most common rationales for nihilism these days do not appeal to supernaturalism, or at least not explicitly. One cluster of ideas appeals to what meta-ethicists call “error theory,” the view that evaluative claims (in this case about meaning in life, or about morality qua necessary for meaning) characteristically posit objectively real or universally justified values, but that such values do not exist. According to one version, value judgments often analytically include a claim to objectivity but there is no reason to think that objective values exist, as they “would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe” (Mackie 1977/1990, 38). According to a second version, life would be meaningless if there were no set of moral standards that could be fully justified to all rational enquirers, but it so happens that such standards cannot exist for persons who can always reasonably question a given claim (Murphy 1982, 12–17). According to a third, we hold certain beliefs about the objectivity and universality of morality and related values such as meaning because they were evolutionarily advantageous to our ancestors, not because they are true. Humans have been “deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a distinterested, objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey” (Ruse and Wilson 1986, 179; cf. Street 2015). One must draw on the intricate work in meta-ethics that has been underway for the past several decades in order to appraise these arguments.

In contrast to error-theoretic arguments for nihilism, there are rationales for it accepting that objective values exist but denying that our lives can ever exhibit or promote them so as to obtain meaning. One version of this approach maintains that, for our lives to matter, we must be in a position to add objective value to the world, which we are not since the objective value of the world is already infinite (Smith 2003). The key premises for this view are that every bit of space-time (or at least the stars in the physical universe) have some positive value, that these values can be added up, and that space is infinite. If the physical world at present contains an infinite degree of value, nothing we do can make a difference in terms of meaning, for infinity plus any amount of value remains infinity. One way to question this argument, beyond doubting the value of space-time or stars, is to suggest that, even if one cannot add to the value of the universe, meaning plausibly comes from being the source of certain values.

A second rationale for nihilism that accepts the existence of objective value is David Benatar’s (2006, 18–59) intriguing “asymmetry argument” for anti-natalism, the view that it is immoral to bring new people into existence because doing so would always be on balance bad for them. For Benatar, the bads of existing (e.g., pains) are real disadvantages relative to not existing, while the goods of existing (pleasures) are not real advantages relative to not existing, since there is in the latter state no one to be deprived of them. If indeed the state of not existing is no worse than that of experiencing the benefits of existence, then, since existing invariably brings harm in its wake, it follows that existing is always worse compared to not existing. Although this argument is illustrated with experiential goods and bads, it seems generalizable to non-experiential ones, including meaning in life and anti-matter. The literature on this argument has become large (for a recent collection, see Hauskeller and Hallich 2022).

Benatar (2006, 60–92, 2017, 35–63) has advanced an additional argument for nihilism, one that appeals to Thomas Nagel’s (1986, 208–32) widely discussed analysis of the extremely external standpoint that human persons can take on their lives. There exists, to use Henry Sidgwick’s influential phrase, the “point of view of the universe,” that is, the standpoint that considers a human being’s life in relation to all times and all places. When one takes up this most external standpoint and views one’s puny impact on the world, little of one’s life appears to matter. What one does in a certain society on Earth over 75 years or so just does not amount to much, when considering the billions of temporal years and billions of light-years that make up space-time. Although this reasoning grants limited kinds of meaning to human beings, from a personal, social, or human perspective, Benatar both denies that the greatest sort of meaning––a cosmic one––is available to them and contends that this makes their lives bad, hence the “nihilist” tag. Some have objected that our lives could in fact have a cosmic significance, say, if they played a role in God’s plan (Quinn 2000, 65–66; Swinburne 2016, 154), were the sole ones with a dignity in the universe (Kahane 2014), or engaged in valuable activities that could be appreciated by anyone anywhere anytime (Wolf 2016, 261–62). Others naturally maintain that cosmic significance is irrelevant to appraising a human life, with some denying that it would be a genuine source of meaning (Landau 2017, 93–99), and others accepting that it would be but maintaining that the absence of this good would not count as a bad or merit regret (discussed in Benatar 2017, 56–62; Williams 2020, 108–11).

Finally, a distinguishable source of nihilism concerns the ontological, as distinct from axiological, preconditions for meaning in life. Perhaps most radically, there are those who deny that we have selves. Do we indeed lack selves, and, if we do, is a meaningful life impossible for us (see essays in Caruso and Flanagan 2018; Le Bihan 2019)? Somewhat less radically, there are those who grant that we have selves, but deny that they are in charge in the relevant way. That is, some have argued that we lack self-governance or free will of the sort that is essential for meaning in life, at least if determinism is true (Pisciotta 2013; essays in Caruso and Flanagan 2018). Non-quantum events, including human decisions, appear to be necessited by a prior state of the world, such that none could have been otherwise, and many of our decisions are a product of unconscious neurological mechanisms (while quantum events are of course utterly beyond our control). If none of our conscious choices could have been avoided and all were ultimately necessited by something external to them, perhaps they are insufficient to merit pride or admiration or to constitute narrative authorship of a life. In reply, some maintain that a compatibilism between determinism and moral responsibility applies with comparable force to meaning in life (e.g., Arpaly 2006; Fischer 2009, 145–77), while others contend that incompatibilism is true of moral responsibility but not of meaning (Pereboom 2014).

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• Delon, N., 2021, “ The Meaning of Life ”, a bibliography on PhilPapers.
• Metz, T., 2021, “ Life, Meaning of ”, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , E. Mason (ed.).
• O’Brien, W., 2021, “ The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.).
• Seachris, J., 2021, “ Meaning of Life: The Analytic Perspective ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.).

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Essays About Daily Life: Top 5 Essay Examples and 7 Prompts

Writing about daily routines and events can be tricky, to help you get started discover our guide with essays about daily life examples and prompts. 

Talking about what we do every day can be mundane. However, it also has many physical and mental health benefits, and writing about our everyday lives helps us gain new perspectives. The records we have in personal journals let us read back on the events that already happened to relive a memory or increase our understanding of our current situation. 

If you prefer to avoid journaling, you can start by producing an essay. Creating an essay about our daily activities helps us appreciate life more and to stop taking things for granted. You can also check out these essays about life .

5 Essay Examples

• 1. My Daily Life as a Student – Essay by Mili
• 2. Write an Essay on Your Daily Life by Darshan Kadu

3. Essay on Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Anonymous on PapersOwl.Com

• 4. My Daily Life by Ken Subedi

1. How to Write About Your Daily Life

2. why write essays about everyday life, 3. my daily life before, during, and after the pandemic, 4. the daily life of a student, 5. daily life of different age groups, 6. social media and our daily lives, 7. daily life: work-life balance, 1. my daily life as a student – essay  by mili.

“I get refreshed with the morning walk or a little exercise and then prepare myself for the study with utmost sincerity. It is against my principle to put off today’s work for tomorrow or to have any private tutor.”

Mili shares her simple life in this essay by describing everyday activities every student does, such as brushing her teeth and exercising. She mentions her classes and recess at 2 PM, where she and her friends eat snacks, play games, and chat. As a student, Mili has a busy six-day schedule but visits theaters after washing her uniforms on Sundays. You might also be interested in these essays about reflection .

2. Write an Essay on Your Daily Life  by Darshan Kadu

“Life is too precious to be idled away in lethargic existence and in useless ventures. My daily routine is jam-packed with actions and activities and keeps me and my mind busy all the time. The adventures of daily life make it interesting and an exciting journey.”

On school days, Kadu’s daily routine includes jogging, getting ready for school, and having breakfast with the whole family. After school and attending meetings, he usually plays with friends in the field. Kadu also mentions how he spends his holidays. He believes that even though he has a daily routine, it’s exciting and full of adventure.

“Ancient Egyptian’s daily life revolves around the Nile and the rich soil around it… daily lives of people have changed a lot since then.”

This essay shows how religion helped the Ancient Egyptians run their daily lives. The author discusses changes in festivals and the treatment of gods and royalty. To make an effective comparison, they use three examples: the importance of family, the Nile, and slavery.

The writer mentions that the Nile was essential in Ancient Egypt because it provided food to the people. Modern Egyptians no longer depend on the Nile river and its rich soil. As for working, people used to be enslaved by the rich and were forced to farm. Now, while farming is a work option, slavery doesn’t happen anymore. Early marriage is also forgotten, but the importance of family is still the same for all Egyptians.

4. My Daily Life  by Ken Subedi

“Sometimes I feel that I am really becoming a machine to have a strict time table. But I also believe that if we do everything on time, success will kiss us and we can lead a qualitative life.”

Subedi believes that people spend the day depending on their roles. Because he’s a student, he talks about how a typical school day goes for him, noting how he follows a strict schedule to do his homework, play with friends, and prepare for the next day. 

Subedi mentions how Saturdays and holidays distract his daily routine and shares how he feels like a machine with the readers. However, he also says that he knows it’s necessary to have a successful life. You might also be interested in these essays about New Year .

5. Long Essay on Television In Our Daily Life by Prasanna

“There are channels that beam programs 24 hours a day. Whereas this may be a boon for the people who do not have much to do anyway, it becomes a source of great distraction for children for whom the priority should be their studies.”

Technology like television is essential today but can also be a distraction to many. Prasanna refers to television as the most common form of entertainment that provides information on what’s happening worldwide. However, some shows have mature or violent elements that have adverse effects, especially on children. Additionally, those who spend too much time watching television will miss the thrill and excitement of going out and meeting other people.

7 Prompts for Essays About Daily Life

Experts say that in writing about your everyday life, you have to live with it. In writing this instructional prompt, you must first introduce and define essays about daily life. Next, give a step-by-step process for writing this topic and explain each step to the readers. Then, discuss the dos and don’ts of writing this essay, especially the information the piece needs.

For example, creating a detailed essay is good, but sometimes including too much information is boring to read. In this case, you should only incorporate relevant and exciting experiences throughout your day. 

Besides clearing the mind, producing essays about daily life improves writing skills, boosts memory retention, and more. Discuss the other benefits of writing an essay about this topic and verify the importance of each. 

This prompt encourages readers to create essays about their daily activities. To help you, read our guide explaining persuasive writing .

The coronavirus pandemic greatly affected everyone’s daily routine. To effectively share your experience and how the virus impacted your everyday life, divide your essay into three parts: before, during, and after the pandemic. 

Recount how your day started and ended for each period. Add any surprising events that occurred, if there are any. Then, include your opinion on the drastic changes you endured during the pandemic. 

A student’s life consists of waking up early, preparing for school, doing homework, and studying for hours. This prompt is perfect for you, regardless of level, if you’re a student. For this prompt, introduce your program to the readers and discuss the daily activities that make your typical day. Include the time management techniques you use and how effective they are for you as a student.

Our schedule changes depending on what we try to accomplish. For example, children are free to play, teenagers are expected to attend school, and adults are supposed to work. For this prompt, focus on each age group’s varying timetable and objectives, then compare and contrast their lives. You can interview someone from each age group to have a reliable representative.

Social media significantly changed our perception of what our daily lives should look like if we want to thrive. Many try to follow an unrealistic schedule to be as prosperous as the ones we see on our feeds.

Gather factual data on the social media users and the frequency with which they visit their accounts on each platform. Analyze these statistics and identify the positive and negative effects of being on social media multiple times a day.

Many struggles with achieving an effective work-life balance. For this prompt, research the average person’s success rate in accomplishing a good routine that strengthens their work and personal relationships. After establishing the benefits of having a functional work-life balance, list how the readers can find balance and use these tips in their daily lives.  

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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Life is short, and for good reason – here’s how to make it more meaningful

Professor, University of Sydney

Disclosure statement

Dean Rickles receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The John Templeton Foundation, and the Franklin-Fetzer Fund (through the Foundational Questions Institute).

University of Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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In 1605 the great Spanish novelist, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, wrote, through the mouthpiece of Don Quixote of La Mancha , that it is

the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.

But just how wise is this? I argue not at all.

It is the height of folly “to keep oneself for tomorrow” if one desires a meaningful existence, and simply leads to an un-lived life, filled with nothing but unrealised possibilities and what-might-have-beens. A wise person should surely live a real life?

Yet, for secular society at least, we appear to have taken this quixotic wisdom very much to heart. It seemingly forms the basis of financial portfolio optimisation where it manifests as the dictum that one should “diversify one’s portfolio” and not risk too much in one specific investment. On the surface this might appear to be a good, rational way to live: treat life like an economic problem (where this approach obviously has merit in terms of investment returns) and, above all else, minimise losses. The less we choose, the less we risk. After all, commitment often involves leaving the other options behind. It is risk heavy.

In the psycho-therapeutic context (borrowing from Carl Gustav Jung ’s theories), those that live as if time were unlimited, keeping all options open, are referred as Puer Aeterni : eternal children. It is precisely by grounding oneself in reality, committing to it, choosing some course of action, being decisive, and so on, that one grows up.

Puers live a merely provisional life, since it is essentially an exercise in reality avoidance. This state of being is no better than reading about tasting wine or hearing music, or watching someone else have an orgasm on a screen, and expecting that to be a sufficient proxy for experiencing such things in reality.

Jung was writing almost a century ago. Today, it is as though a peculiar force is driving us further and further from reality. With COVID-19 we found ourselves locked away, teaching and meeting over Zoom, which has persisted beyond the lockdowns. With the advent of “the Metaverse”, humanity faces the possibility of unplugging even more from the real world and from real life.

Of course, technology can be a wonderful tool, and I’m not dismissing the utility of Zoom and virtual reality (which, of course, might allow a more immersive version of Zooming), but we must be constantly on guard against succumbing to attempts to undermine our ability and our existential need to make choices that matter.

A society of people unwilling to commit to action that will affect the world for which they are responsible is tantamount to a society of children, whatever their chronological age. Indeed, the psychoanalyst Dan Kiley once recast this puer complex in terms of J. M. Barrie’s archetypal character Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, whose motto is

Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever.

The puer might have “ecstasies innumerable” but find themselves, to quote Barrie again , “looking through the window at the one joy from which [they] must be for ever barred.” And so it is with those unable to commit to some specific future, person, job, etc. They cannot be said to properly live or to engage properly with the world and its inhabitants. They are already living in a kind of simulation.

Jung called this state “the provisional life.” Likewise, much earlier, the stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, in his book On the Shortness of Life , refers to a “tossing about” rather than a “journey,” which forges a path through the space of possibilities with intention, design, and often courage. Life is not merely existing. It is not just being there through the lapse of time.

Read more: What would Seneca say? Six Stoic tips for surviving lockdown

Commitment as a sacrifice

But perhaps we shouldn’t be quite so dismissive of the avoidance of commitment, as Kiley, Jung, and Seneca were. The world is indeed full of possibilities. But a world full of possibility is also full of uncertainty (the basis of the risk mentioned earlier). And from this uncertainty comes the anxiety of having to face the risking of decisions.

What is the ultimate source of this anxiety? I suspect it is the latent knowledge that each decisive action taken is simultaneously a kind of death; as much a destructive act as a creative or productive one, killing off alternatives to allow just a single one to live.

A commitment is thus a sacrificial offering of sorts, of the other possibilities – this is also a sacrifice to the possibility that is made actual, thereby magnifying its significance. The anxiety is the recognition that decisions can matter in a fundamental way, both for the decider and for the world around them.

Hence, the solution, assumed to be rational, is simply to not make any decisions and keep all options on the table. And, of course, since our space of possibilities is ever-shrinking as we age, we want to retain as many options as possible, viewing them as the very spring of life. But a life without limit can produce only a stagnant pond.

Such limits become most directly observed at a moment of crisis. There are times when we fully realise we stand at a fork in the road. That feeling is fear, because we know at such moments we are pruning away some possibilities in an irreversible way. Indeed, the very word “crisis” comes from the Greek word for deciding: krinein .

The fear is rational because it is a momentous thing. Often this comes at mid-life, of course, because we know that we are also at a turning point: at best, halfway to the end. At this point decisions seem to take on a greater magnitude precisely because our options are becoming more limited. Here, we find that death, like a beam of light, focuses as it narrows.

Ordinarily, we think of limitations (especially death, the ultimate limit) as things that disrupt our freedom precisely because they remove possibilities in this way. But, paradoxically, limits can be seen to give birth to freedom. And, furthermore, this freedom born of limitation is where a bounty of meaning lies for all of us.

Read more: Friday essay: on reckoning with the fact of one's death

Immortality is not a good idea

All of this clearly impacts the ongoing obsession with immortality . This is the biggest folly of all. Living forever, immortality, is not a good idea if you want a life of meaning.

While Seneca argued “it’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it,” I argue that life’s very shortness is, in fact, the primary source of its meaning. Life is short, and it is so for good reason.

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger defended a similar view in his book Being and Time, which is undoubtedly a work of genius, but there’s a friendlier version of the idea in the TV Series The Good Place (where the “good place” is the eternal afterlife).

In the penultimate episode, the inhabitants are offered a way out of a bland eternity and into oblivion, many gladly accept the latter precisely because meaning evaporates without limitation.

Read more: Kantian comedy: the philosophy of The Good Place

Death is the most important limitation of all because this finite boundary is required to enable the choosing of possibilities. It makes only some actual, along with the discarding of virtual possibilities.

Death allows us to build meaning into our lives. It leads to the very opposite of virtual reality. Life, through our choices, becomes a kind of reality-construction project. Here lies the bounty.

Of course, many lives are too short in order to generate much or any meaning in this way, when taken too young, for example. There is not much to say by way of justification for this. I certainly would say that while a finite, short life is required for meaning, meaning also demands that life have a duration sufficient to at least allow for the growth of a person to a certain level where they are capable of making choices and forging a path in the world. However, a long life does not necessarily contain more meaning than a shorter one. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, acknowledging that we don’t always get to choose how long we have, “[i]t is not length of life, but depth of life” that really matters.

So while we take away the godlike property of being unlimited when we leave the provisional behind us and commit by making a decision and acting, we open the door to another godlike ability: the creative and cosmic power of choice, of actualising some possibility from the many available.

While it doesn’t seem like it, death is our greatest gift in terms of meaningful existence since it is the very source of choice, of having to decide, precisely due to its focusing effect.

Decisive action is you being in control of what happens. It is you happening to the world, rather than it happening to you. This is real freedom.

Dean Rickles’ book Life is Short is published by Princeton University Press.

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Essay on Life Is What We Make It

Students are often asked to write an essay on Life Is What We Make It in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Life Is What We Make It

Introduction.

Life is an incredible journey. Every person’s life is a unique story, and we are the authors. The phrase “Life is what we make it” means that our actions and choices shape our life.

Our Choices

The choices we make are like seeds. They grow and shape our future. If we choose to study hard, we can achieve good grades. If we choose to be kind, we make friends. Our choices make our life what it is.

Overcoming Challenges

Life is not always easy. We face challenges and problems. But if we work hard and stay positive, we can overcome them. This makes us stronger and shapes our life.

Our Attitude

Our attitude also shapes our life. If we think positively, we see opportunities. If we think negatively, we see problems. So, a positive attitude can make our life better.

In conclusion, “Life is what we make it” means our choices, attitude, and actions shape our life. We have the power to make our life beautiful. So, let’s make the best of it.

250 Words Essay on Life Is What We Make It

Understanding life.

Life is like a blank canvas. It’s a vast space where we can paint anything we want. We shape our life with our actions, thoughts, and dreams. Just like an artist, we create our masterpiece with every choice we make.

Choices and Consequences

Each choice we make leads us to a different path. These paths can be filled with joy, sadness, success, or failure. But remember, even the wrong choices teach us valuable lessons. They make us strong and wise. So, don’t be scared to make choices. They are the brush strokes on our canvas of life.

Power of Positivity

Our thoughts and attitude towards life also play a big role. If we think positive, we attract good things. If we think negative, we attract bad things. It’s like a magnet. So, always try to keep a positive attitude. It will make your life beautiful and happy.

Chasing Dreams

Dreams are the colors of our life. They give us a purpose and direction. Chasing our dreams makes our life exciting and meaningful. So, dream big and work hard to make them come true. Your life will become a beautiful painting filled with vibrant colors.

In conclusion, life is what we make it. Our choices, thoughts, and dreams shape our life. So, let’s make our life a masterpiece. Let’s fill it with love, joy, success, and beautiful memories. Remember, we are the artist of our life. We hold the brush. We choose the colors. We create the picture.

500 Words Essay on Life Is What We Make It

Life is like a blank canvas given to us at birth. Just as a painter uses different colors to create a beautiful painting, we use our actions, decisions, and experiences to shape our lives. The saying “Life is what we make it” means that the quality of our lives is determined by how we react to the situations we face.

Our Choices Shape Our Lives

Every day, we make choices. Some are small, like what to eat for breakfast, and others are big, like what career to pursue. Each choice, no matter how small, has a ripple effect on our lives. For example, choosing to study hard can lead to good grades, which can open doors to further education and better job opportunities. On the other hand, choosing to waste time can lead to poor grades and fewer opportunities. Thus, our choices are powerful tools that shape our future.

Life is not always easy. We all face challenges, from failing a test to losing a loved one. These challenges can make us feel sad and defeated. But remember, these difficult times are not meant to break us, but to make us stronger. By facing these challenges head-on and learning from them, we can grow and become better individuals. In this way, we make our lives meaningful and fulfilling.

Importance of Attitude

Our attitude plays a crucial role in how we perceive our lives. If we approach life with a positive attitude, we can find joy and happiness even in difficult situations. For instance, failing a test can be seen as a disaster or as a learning opportunity. With a positive attitude, we can choose to learn from our mistakes and strive to do better next time. This positive approach can make our lives happier and more satisfying.

Role of Relationships

Our relationships with others also contribute to the quality of our lives. Building strong, positive relationships with family, friends, and others can bring love, support, and happiness into our lives. On the contrary, negative relationships can bring stress and sadness. Therefore, it’s important to choose our relationships wisely and to treat others with kindness and respect.

In conclusion, “Life is what we make it” is a powerful saying that reminds us of our ability to shape our own lives. Through our choices, our reactions to challenges, our attitude, and our relationships, we can create a life that is fulfilling and meaningful. So, let’s take charge of our lives and make the most of every moment. After all, our life is our masterpiece, and we are the artists.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Life Is The Best Teacher
• Essay on Life Is Not Easy
• Essay on Life Is Not Always Fair

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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How to write a sparkling value of life essay.

What Is The Value Of Life Essay?

The value of life essay is one that every student has to write at some stage. These essays highlight various reasons to appreciate one’s life. A values of life essay answers the ever-baffling question, “What are the things that make life beautiful and worth living?”

Since it is a common subject, it can be challenging to write an essay that impresses the reader. Here are all the tips that you need:

• Make Your Reader Think

This is the most important aspect of your value of life essays. Does it give your readers something to think about? The trick is to talk about something relatable. Start with a question that you know most people have in their minds.

For instance, start your essay on the value of life with a question like, “What is the relationship between suffering and the value of life? Why do we go through the things that we do?”

You can then work your way into making it a what is life worth essay. How suffering and struggles help you learn things that shape your understanding of life.

• Talk About Personal Life Changing Experiences

There is nothing stronger than personal experiences to move your readers. Most of us have had that one life-changing moment that almost jolts you into realizing what the true meaning of life is. These moments are powerful. They give you a lot to write about and share. Just when you are wonder “Is life priceless”, these moments show you why it truly is.

When you are basing your essay on life experiences, you can use a simple flow of thought:

• Start with a relatable question as mentioned before. The answers to the question should be related to the experience you want to talk about.
• Write about your perception of this question or thought before the experience and how it changed later on.
• Conclude your value of human life essay with a few lines about what you think are the really important things in life.
• The Value of People and Relationships

There is no doubt that it is our relationships with people that keep us going through the toughest times in life. It is for the people around us that we strive and struggle each day. All our efforts are centred on them. Sometimes it is about giving your family the best and other times it is just about making them feel proud of you.

Your essay can also highlight different reasons why we must value people to value life. You can even bring in negative experiences and stories about relationships gone sour and how they taught you the true meaning of life.

Using references to relationships makes your essays on the value of life relatable. As mentioned above, that is the best way to add more depth to your essay.

• Draw from History and Mythology

The easiest way to approach a what is value of life essay is to use references from folktales, history and mythology.

The Value Of Life Essay – Top Tips For You!

When you are taking this route, remember that the story itself is not the essay. You are only providing an example from these texts to highlight your points of view. Here are some ideas to incorporate existing stories, poems and more into the value of life essay you write:

Note down what you think is the true value of life. It could be people, emotions, life principals or just about anything that you wish to highlight. Then look for stories or references in history that reiterate the same ideas. Your essay must begin with your own stance, with the story or example woven into it seamlessly.

Your essay can take one of the above approaches or can become a combination of all of them. The most important thing is to ensure that you give your readers some food for thought.

Get in touch with us today to get writing help to complete your assignment. Our experts will guide you through your essay to ensure that you have a final product that gets you great grades.

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Quality of Life — Living a Good Life

Living a Good Life

• Categories: Quality of Life

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Published: Mar 20, 2024

Words: 579 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Physical well-being, mental well-being, meaningful relationships, personal growth.

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Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.  – confucius.

Sometimes, the simple things are the best. Although there is some room for the occasional bit of complication.

What does that mean? This quote hit me pretty hard, once I started thinking about it. What if it didn’t matter what kind of car you drove. What if it didn’t matter how nice your house was, so long as it was functional? It got me thinking about how much of our lives are complicated only because we choose to make it so.

How do we complicate things beyond need? When we get a laptop, suddenly everywhere is the office. To me, that’s more complicated than necessary. Same with smart phones and tablets. Yes, they can be useful, but how much easier do they make your life, or are they a complication? If you have to worry about the battery and how many bars you have, how much help is it in simplifying our lives?

Why is simplicity important?    I believe simplicity is important in our lives. Whether it’s a camping trip with no phones, computers or microwaves or if it’s just a relaxing evening with a book and a fireplace, going simple can be a great way to reduce your stress and relax.

Simplification is a useful tool to help you unwind. Reduction of extraneous input (phone, kids, parents, loud sounds, bright lights, phones, computers or whatever) and focusing on the one simple thing (which could be kids, loud music or computers) really helps me.

Sometimes I can get a bit overloaded with input, distractions and the frenetic pace of our modern life. Sometimes we just need to simplify, even if it’s only for a few hours. This can really help the body and sensory system recharge and be ready for another busy day. At least, it works for me. How about you?

Where can I apply this in my life? What do we really need to live? There are the basics: food, water, clothing and shelter. Then there are a few more, connections with others, information/education and health. Once we get beyond the basic needs, often make things more complex than is necessary.

That said, there are things that make life more comfortable, so we trade extra complexity for some other benefit. A modern washing machine is far more efficient than taking your clothes to the stream and pounding them on rocks. The complexity comes when we need to install plumbing, sewer, and electricity to make it work. Everyone I know wouldn’t hesitate to make that trade, but it is more complex.

Where does one cross the line into too much complexity? That is a very personal decision, and depends on your interest and tolerance for complexity. I find that, within certain bounds, I thrive on complexity. In the rest of my life, I prefer simplicity. Not back to the age of washboards and candles (except for camping weekends), but I find myself streamlining my complexities in many ways.

I am starting to treat my electronics more as tools, than as toys to be tinkered with. I still enjoy building computer systems, but will probably buy my next system custom configured. Same with my next laptop (this one is only 8 years old, it’s still got a little life in it for posting and reading blogs).

Simplify. I don’t need the stress and hassle of digging up all the specs, figuring out what is the best, downloading all the drivers, etc. At one time, I thrived on the challenge, but I have better things to do with my time these days. How about you, how are you using your time, energy, and effort?

Take a moment and look at your life. What are you doing that doesn’t serve you? Where do you chase complexity for it’s own sake, and where can you simplify? For those looking for a resource, Leo Babauta runs an excellent site on minimization called mnmlist.com . I’m sure there are other great resources out there for specific aspects of your life, look for what you need. Search engines are your friend. 8)

What part of your life do you want tone down a bit, cut back, reduce or minimize? What were the reasons that led your present level of complexity, and what are the new reasons to reduce it? Has the need passed, or do you need to find another way to fill the need once satisfied by this bit of complexity?

Think it through, and come up with some ideas, including what to do with the extra time and energy that used to go into the complexity you just downgraded. Feel free to try this again and again, until you are more comfortable with yourself. And check back each year to see if you want to change things around or stay the course.

It’s your life, and your choice. Try something, see how it works, then try making some adjustments. Perhaps you get more out of that complexity than you initially thought. Don’t feel bad about adding it back, there is such a thing as “too little,” and it’s a personal decision just like “too much.”

From: Twitter,  @philo_quotes confirmed at :  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/confucius104563.html Photo by  loiclemeur

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3 responses to life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

This qoute has been in my head for a long time but i dont recall hearing it at any point

Brilliant post. Resonated with me a lot

Thanks for the kind words. I’m glad they meant something to you.

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16 Strong College Essay Examples from Top Schools

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Most high school students don’t get a lot of experience with creative writing, so the college essay can be especially daunting. Reading examples of successful essays, however, can help you understand what admissions officers are looking for.

In this post, we’ll share 16 college essay examples of many different topics. Most of the essay prompts fall into 8 different archetypes, and you can approach each prompt under that archetype in a similar way. We’ve grouped these examples by archetype so you can better structure your approach to college essays.

If you’re looking for school-specific guides, check out our 2022-2023 essay breakdowns .

Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Note: the essays are titled in this post for navigation purposes, but they were not originally titled. We also include the original prompt where possible.

The Common App essay goes to all of the schools on your list, unless those schools use a separate application platform. Because of this, it’s the most important essay in your portfolio, and likely the longest essay you’ll need to write (you get up to 650 words). 

The goal of this essay is to share a glimpse into who you are, what matters to you, and what you hope to achieve. It’s a chance to share your story. 

Learn more about how to write the Common App essay in our complete guide.

The Multiple Meanings of Point

Prompt: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. (250-650 words)

Night had robbed the academy of its daytime colors, yet there was comfort in the dim lights that cast shadows of our advances against the bare studio walls. Silhouettes of roundhouse kicks, spin crescent kicks, uppercuts and the occasional butterfly kick danced while we sparred. She approached me, eyes narrowed with the trace of a smirk challenging me. “Ready spar!” Her arm began an upward trajectory targeting my shoulder, a common first move. I sidestepped — only to almost collide with another flying fist. Pivoting my right foot, I snapped my left leg, aiming my heel at her midsection. The center judge raised one finger. 

There was no time to celebrate, not in the traditional sense at least. Master Pollard gave a brief command greeted with a unanimous “Yes, sir” and the thud of 20 hands dropping-down-and-giving-him-30, while the “winners” celebrated their victory with laps as usual. 

Three years ago, seven-thirty in the evening meant I was a warrior. It meant standing up straighter, pushing a little harder, “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am”, celebrating birthdays by breaking boards, never pointing your toes, and familiarity. Three years later, seven-thirty in the morning meant I was nervous. 

The room is uncomfortably large. The sprung floor soaks up the checkerboard of sunlight piercing through the colonial windows. The mirrored walls further illuminate the studio and I feel the light scrutinizing my sorry attempts at a pas de bourrée, while capturing the organic fluidity of the dancers around me. “Chassé en croix, grand battement, pique, pirouette.” I follow the graceful limbs of the woman in front of me, her legs floating ribbons, as she executes what seems to be a perfect ronds de jambes. Each movement remains a negotiation. With admirable patience, Ms. Tan casts me a sympathetic glance.   

There is no time to wallow in the misery that is my right foot. Taekwondo calls for dorsiflexion; pointed toes are synonymous with broken toes. My thoughts drag me into a flashback of the usual response to this painful mistake: “You might as well grab a tutu and head to the ballet studio next door.” Well, here I am Master Pollard, unfortunately still following your orders to never point my toes, but no longer feeling the satisfaction that comes with being a third degree black belt with 5 years of experience quite literally under her belt. It’s like being a white belt again — just in a leotard and ballet slippers. 

But the appetite for new beginnings that brought me here doesn’t falter. It is only reinforced by the classical rendition of “Dancing Queen” that floods the room and the ghost of familiarity that reassures me that this new beginning does not and will not erase the past. After years spent at the top, it’s hard to start over. But surrendering what you are only leads you to what you may become. In Taekwondo, we started each class reciting the tenets: honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, courage, humility, and knowledge, and I have never felt that I embodied those traits more so than when I started ballet. 

The thing about change is that it eventually stops making things so different. After nine different schools, four different countries, three different continents, fluency in Tamil, Norwegian, and English, there are more blurred lines than there are clear fragments. My life has not been a tactfully executed, gold medal-worthy Taekwondo form with each movement defined, nor has it been a series of frappés performed by a prima ballerina with each extension identical and precise, but thankfully it has been like the dynamics of a spinning back kick, fluid, and like my chances of landing a pirouette, unpredictable. 

The first obvious strength of this essay is the introduction—it is interesting and snappy and uses enough technical language that we want to figure out what the student is discussing. When writing introductions, students tend to walk the line between intriguing and confusing. It is important that your essay ends up on the intentionally intriguing side of that line—like this student does! We are a little confused at first, but by then introducing the idea of “sparring,” the student grounds their essay.

People often advise young writers to “show, not tell.” This student takes that advice a step further and makes the reader do a bit of work to figure out what they are telling us. Nowhere in this essay does it say “After years of Taekwondo, I made the difficult decision to switch over to ballet.” Rather, the student says “It’s like being a white belt again — just in a leotard and ballet slippers.” How powerful! 

After a lot of emotional language and imagery, this student finishes off their essay with very valuable (and necessary!) reflection. They show admissions officers that they are more than just a good writer—they are a mature and self-aware individual who would be beneficial to a college campus. Self-awareness comes through with statements like “surrendering what you are only leads you to what you may become” and maturity can be seen through the student’s discussion of values: “honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, courage, humility, and knowledge, and I have never felt that I embodied those traits more so than when I started ballet.”

Sparking Self-Awareness

Prompt: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? (250-650 words)

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection. My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. 

Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. 

“Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” they taunted. “Having some trouble?” They prodded me with the ends of the chewed branches and, with a few effortless scrapes of wood on rock, sparked a red and roaring flame. My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame. 

In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive. And I’d gotten glasses, having grown horrifically nearsighted; long nights of dim lighting and thick books had done this. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lain down on a hill, barefaced, and seen the stars without having to squint. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. 

Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses. 

That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.

First things first, this Common App essay is well-written. This student is definitely showing the admissions officers her ability to articulate her points beautifully and creatively. It starts with vivid images like that of the “rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free.” And because the prose is flowery (and beautiful!), the writer can get away with metaphors like “I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms” that might sound cheesy without the clear command of the English language that the writer quickly establishes.

In addition to being well-written, this essay is thematically cohesive. It begins with the simple introduction “Fire!” and ends with the following image: “When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.” This full-circle approach leaves readers satisfied and impressed.

While dialogue often comes off as cliche or trite, this student effectively incorporates her family members saying “Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” This is achieved through the apt use of the verb “taunted” to characterize the questioning and through the question’s thematic connection to the earlier image of the student as a rustic princess. Similarly, rhetorical questions can feel randomly placed in essays, but this student’s inclusion of the questions “Was I so dainty?” and “Was I that incapable?” feel perfectly justified after she establishes that she was pondering her failure.

Quite simply, this essay shows how quality writing can make a simple story outstandingly compelling. 

Why This College?

“Why This College?” is one of the most common essay prompts, likely because schools want to understand whether you’d be a good fit and how you’d use their resources.

This essay is one of the more straightforward ones you’ll write for college applications, but you still can and should allow your voice to shine through.

Learn more about how to write the “Why This College?” essay in our guide.

Prompt: How will you explore your intellectual and academic interests at the University of Pennsylvania? Please answer this question given the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying (650 words).

Sister Simone Roach, a theorist of nursing ethics, said, “caring is the human mode of being.” I have long been inspired by Sister Roach’s Five C’s of Caring: commitment, conscience, competence, compassion, and confidence. Penn both embraces and fosters these values through a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum and unmatched access to service and volunteer opportunities.

COMMITMENT. Reading through the activities that Penn Quakers devote their time to (in addition to academics!) felt like drinking from a firehose in the best possible way. As a prospective nursing student with interests outside of my major, I value this level of flexibility. I plan to leverage Penn’s liberal arts curriculum to gain an in-depth understanding of the challenges LGBT people face, especially regarding healthcare access. Through courses like “Interactional Processes with LGBT Individuals” and volunteering at the Mazzoni Center for outreach, I hope to learn how to better support the Penn LGBT community as well as my family and friends, including my cousin, who came out as trans last year.

CONSCIENCE. As one of the first people in my family to attend a four-year university, I wanted a school that promoted a sense of moral responsibility among its students. At Penn, professors challenge their students to question and recreate their own set of morals by sparking thought- provoking, open-minded discussions. I can imagine myself advocating for universal healthcare in courses such as “Health Care Reform & Future of American Health System” and debating its merits with my peers. Studying in an environment where students confidently voice their opinions – conservative or liberal – will push me to question and strengthen my value system.

COMPETENCE. Two aspects that drew my attention to Penn’s BSN program were its high-quality research opportunities and hands-on nursing projects. Through its Office of Nursing Research, Penn connects students to faculty members who share similar research interests. As I volunteered at a nursing home in high school, I hope to work with Dr. Carthon to improve the quality of care for senior citizens. Seniors, especially minorities, face serious barriers to healthcare that I want to resolve. Additionally, Penn’s unique use of simulations to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world application impressed me. Using computerized manikins that mimic human responses, classes in Penn’s nursing program allow students to apply their emergency medical skills in a mass casualty simulation and monitor their actions afterward through a video system. Participating in this activity will help me identify my strengths and areas for improvement regarding crisis management and medical care in a controlled yet realistic setting. Research opportunities and simulations will develop my skills even before I interact with patients.

COMPASSION. I value giving back through community service, and I have a particular interest in Penn’s Community Champions and Nursing Students For Sexual & Reproductive Health (NSRH). As a four-year volunteer health educator, I hope to continue this work as a Community Champions member. I am excited to collaborate with medical students to teach fourth and fifth graders in the city about cardiology or lead a chair dance class for the elders at the LIFE Center. Furthermore, as a feminist who firmly believes in women’s abortion rights, I’d like to join NSRH in order to advocate for women’s health on campus. At Penn, I can work with like-minded people to make a meaningful difference.

CONFIDENCE. All of the Quakers that I have met possess one defining trait: confidence. Each student summarized their experiences at Penn as challenging but fulfilling. Although I expect my coursework to push me, from my conversations with current Quakers I know it will help me to be far more effective in my career.

The Five C’s of Caring are important heuristics for nursing, but they also provide insight into how I want to approach my time in college. I am eager to engage with these principles both as a nurse and as a Penn Quaker, and I can’t wait to start.

This prompt from Penn asks students to tailor their answer to their specific field of study. One great thing that this student does is identify their undergraduate school early, by mentioning “Sister Simone Roach, a theorist of nursing ethics.” You don’t want readers confused or searching through other parts of your application to figure out your major.

With a longer essay like this, it is important to establish structure. Some students organize their essay in a narrative form, using an anecdote from their past or predicting their future at a school. This student uses Roach’s 5 C’s of Caring as a framing device that organizes their essay around values. This works well!

While this essay occasionally loses voice, there are distinct moments where the student’s personality shines through. We see this with phrases like “felt like drinking from a fire hose in the best possible way” and “All of the Quakers that I have met possess one defining trait: confidence.” It is important to show off your personality to make your essay stand out. 

Finally, this student does a great job of referencing specific resources about Penn. It’s clear that they have done their research (they’ve even talked to current Quakers). They have dreams and ambitions that can only exist at Penn.

Prompt: What is it about Yale that has led you to apply? (125 words or fewer)

Coin collector and swimmer. Hungarian and Romanian. Critical and creative thinker. I was drawn to Yale because they don’t limit one’s mind with “or” but rather embrace unison with “and.” 

Wandering through the Beinecke Library, I prepare for my multidisciplinary Energy Studies capstone about the correlation between hedonism and climate change, making it my goal to find implications in environmental sociology. Under the tutelage of Assistant Professor Arielle Baskin-Sommers, I explore the emotional deficits of depression, utilizing neuroimaging to scrutinize my favorite branch of psychology: human perception. At Walden Peer Counseling, I integrate my peer support and active listening skills to foster an empathetic environment for the Yale community. Combining my interests in psychological and environmental studies is why I’m proud to be a Bulldog. 

This answer to the “Why This College” question is great because 1) the student shows their excitement about attending Yale 2) we learn the ways in which attending Yale will help them achieve their goals and 3) we learn their interests and identities.

In this response, you can find a prime example of the “Image of the Future” approach, as the student flashes forward and envisions their life at Yale, using present tense (“I explore,” “I integrate,” “I’m proud”). This approach is valuable if you are trying to emphasize your dedication to a specific school. Readers get the feeling that this student is constantly imagining themselves on campus—it feels like Yale really matters to them.

Starting this image with the Beinecke Library is great because the Beinecke Library only exists at Yale. It is important to tailor “Why This College” responses to each specific school. This student references a program of study, a professor, and an extracurricular that only exist at Yale. Additionally, they connect these unique resources to their interests—psychological and environmental studies.

Finally, we learn about the student (independent of academics) through this response. By the end of their 125 words, we know their hobbies, ethnicities, and social desires, in addition to their academic interests. It can be hard to tackle a 125-word response, but this student shows that it’s possible.

Why This Major?

The goal of this prompt is to understand how you came to be interested in your major and what you plan to do with it. For competitive programs like engineering, this essay helps admissions officers distinguish students who have a genuine passion and are most likely to succeed in the program. This is another more straightforward essay, but you do have a bit more freedom to include relevant anecdotes.

Learn more about how to write the “Why This Major?” essay in our guide.

Why Duke Engineering

Prompt: If you are applying to the Pratt School of Engineering as a first year applicant, please discuss why you want to study engineering and why you would like to study at Duke (250 words).

One Christmas morning, when I was nine, I opened a snap circuit set from my grandmother. Although I had always loved math and science, I didn’t realize my passion for engineering until I spent the rest of winter break creating different circuits to power various lights, alarms, and sensors. Even after I outgrew the toy, I kept the set in my bedroom at home and knew I wanted to study engineering. Later, in a high school biology class, I learned that engineering didn’t only apply to circuits, but also to medical devices that could improve people’s quality of life. Biomedical engineering allows me to pursue my academic passions and help people at the same time.

Just as biology and engineering interact in biomedical engineering, I am fascinated by interdisciplinary research in my chosen career path. Duke offers unmatched resources, such as DUhatch and The Foundry, that will enrich my engineering education and help me practice creative problem-solving skills. The emphasis on entrepreneurship within these resources will also help me to make a helpful product. Duke’s Bass Connections program also interests me; I firmly believe that the most creative and necessary problem-solving comes by bringing people together from different backgrounds. Through this program, I can use my engineering education to solve complicated societal problems such as creating sustainable surgical tools for low-income countries. Along the way, I can learn alongside experts in the field. Duke’s openness and collaborative culture span across its academic disciplines, making Duke the best place for me to grow both as an engineer and as a social advocate.

This prompt calls for a complex answer. Students must explain both why they want to study engineering and why Duke is the best place for them to study engineering.

This student begins with a nice hook—a simple anecdote about a simple present with profound consequences. They do not fluff up their anecdote with flowery images or emotionally-loaded language; it is what it is, and it is compelling and sweet. As their response continues, they express a particular interest in problem-solving. They position problem-solving as a fundamental part of their interest in engineering (and a fundamental part of their fascination with their childhood toy). This helps readers to learn about the student!

Problem-solving is also the avenue by which they introduce Duke’s resources—DUhatch, The Foundry, and Duke’s Bass Connections program. It is important to notice that the student explains how these resources can help them achieve their future goals—it is not enough to simply identify the resources!

This response is interesting and focused. It clearly answers the prompt, and it feels honest and authentic.

Why Georgia Tech CompSci

Prompt: Why do you want to study your chosen major specifically at Georgia Tech? (300 words max)

I held my breath and hit RUN. Yes! A plump white cat jumped out and began to catch the falling pizzas. Although my Fat Cat project seems simple now, it was the beginning of an enthusiastic passion for computer science. Four years and thousands of hours of programming later, that passion has grown into an intense desire to explore how computer science can serve society. Every day, surrounded by technology that can recognize my face and recommend scarily-specific ads, I’m reminded of Uncle Ben’s advice to a young Spiderman: “with great power comes great responsibility”. Likewise, the need to ensure digital equality has skyrocketed with AI’s far-reaching presence in society; and I believe that digital fairness starts with equality in education.

The unique use of threads at the College of Computing perfectly matches my interests in AI and its potential use in education; the path of combined threads on Intelligence and People gives me the rare opportunity to delve deep into both areas. I’m particularly intrigued by the rich sets of both knowledge-based and data-driven intelligence courses, as I believe AI should not only show correlation of events, but also provide insight for why they occur.

In my four years as an enthusiastic online English tutor, I’ve worked hard to help students overcome both financial and technological obstacles in hopes of bringing quality education to people from diverse backgrounds. For this reason, I’m extremely excited by the many courses in the People thread that focus on education and human-centered technology. I’d love to explore how to integrate AI technology into the teaching process to make education more available, affordable, and effective for people everywhere. And with the innumerable opportunities that Georgia Tech has to offer, I know that I will be able to go further here than anywhere else.

With a “Why This Major” essay, you want to avoid using all of your words to tell a story. That being said, stories are a great way to show your personality and make your essay stand out. This student’s story takes up only their first 21 words, but it positions the student as fun and funny and provides an endearing image of cats and pizzas—who doesn’t love cats and pizzas? There are other moments when the student’s personality shines through also, like the Spiderman reference.

While this pop culture reference adds color, it also is important for what the student is getting at: their passion. They want to go into computer science to address the issues of security and equity that are on the industry’s mind, and they acknowledge these concerns with their comments about “scarily-specific ads” and their statement that “the need to ensure digital equality has skyrocketed.” This student is self-aware and aware of the state of the industry. This aptitude will be appealing for admissions officers.

The conversation around “threads” is essential for this student’s response because the prompt asks specifically about the major at Georgia Tech and it is the only thing they reference that is specific to Georgia Tech. Threads are great, but this student would have benefitted from expanding on other opportunities specific to Georgia Tech later in the essay, instead of simply inserting “innumerable opportunities.”

Overall, this student shows personality, passion, and aptitude—precisely what admissions officers want to see!

Extracurricular Essay

You’re asked to describe your activities on the Common App, but chances are, you have at least one extracurricular that’s impacted you in a way you can’t explain in 150 characters.

This essay archetype allows you to share how your most important activity shaped you and how you might use those lessons learned in the future. You are definitely welcome to share anecdotes and use a narrative approach, but remember to include some reflection. A common mistake students make is to only describe the activity without sharing how it impacted them.

Learn more about how to write the Extracurricular Essay in our guide.

A Dedicated Musician

My fingers raced across the keys, rapidly striking one after another. My body swayed with the music as my hands raced across the piano. Crashing onto the final chord, it was over as quickly as it had begun. My shoulders relaxed and I couldn’t help but break into a satisfied grin. I had just played the Moonlight Sonata’s third movement, a longtime dream of mine. 

Four short months ago, though, I had considered it impossible. The piece’s tempo was impossibly fast, its notes stretching between each end of the piano, forcing me to reach farther than I had ever dared. It was 17 pages of the most fragile and intricate melodies I had ever encountered. 

But that summer, I found myself ready to take on the challenge. With the end of the school year, I was released from my commitment to practicing for band and solo performances. I was now free to determine my own musical path: either succeed in learning the piece, or let it defeat me for the third summer in a row. 

Over those few months, I spent countless hours practicing the same notes until they burned a permanent place in my memory, creating a soundtrack for even my dreams. Some would say I’ve mastered the piece, but as a musician I know better. Now that I can play it, I am eager to take the next step and add in layers of musicality and expression to make the once-impossible piece even more beautiful.

In this response, the student uses their extracurricular, piano, as a way to emphasize their positive qualities. At the beginning, readers are invited on a journey with the student where we feel their struggle, their intensity, and ultimately their satisfaction. With this descriptive image, we form a valuable connection with the student.

Then, we get to learn about what makes this student special: their dedication and work ethic. The fact that this student describes their desire to be productive during the summer shows an intensity that is appealing to admissions officers. Additionally, the growth mindset that this student emphasizes in their conclusion is appealing to admissions officers.

The Extracurricular Essay can be seen as an opportunity to characterize yourself. This student clearly identified their positive qualities, then used the Extracurricular Essay as a way to articulate them.

A Complicated Relationship with the School Newspaper

My school’s newspaper and I have a typical love-hate relationship; some days I want nothing more than to pass two hours writing and formatting articles, while on others the mere thought of student journalism makes me shiver. Still, as we’re entering our fourth year together, you could consider us relatively stable. We’ve learned to accept each other’s differences; at this point I’ve become comfortable spending an entire Friday night preparing for an upcoming issue, and I hardly even notice the snail-like speed of our computers. I’ve even benefitted from the polygamous nature of our relationship—with twelve other editors, there’s a lot of cooperation involved. Perverse as it may be, from that teamwork I’ve both gained some of my closest friends and improved my organizational and time-management skills. And though leaving it in the hands of new editors next year will be difficult, I know our time together has only better prepared me for future relationships.

This response is great. It’s cute and endearing and, importantly, tells readers a lot about the student who wrote it. Framing this essay in the context of a “love-hate relationship,” then supplementing with comments like “We’ve learned to accept each other’s differences” allows this student to advertise their maturity in a unique and engaging way. 

While Extracurricular Essays can be a place to show how you’ve grown within an activity, they can also be a place to show how you’ve grown through an activity. At the end of this essay, readers think that this student is mature and enjoyable, and we think that their experience with the school newspaper helped make them that way.

Participating in Democracy

Prompt: Research shows that an ability to learn from experiences outside the classroom correlates with success in college. What was your greatest learning experience over the past 4 years that took place outside of the traditional classroom? (250 words) 

The cool, white halls of the Rayburn House office building contrasted with the bustling energy of interns entertaining tourists, staffers rushing to cover committee meetings, and my fellow conference attendees separating to meet with our respective congresspeople. Through civics and US history classes, I had learned about our government, but simply hearing the legislative process outlined didn’t prepare me to navigate it. It was my first political conference, and, after learning about congressional mechanics during breakout sessions, I was lobbying my representative about an upcoming vote crucial to the US-Middle East relationship. As the daughter of Iranian immigrants, my whole life had led me to the moment when I could speak on behalf of the family members who had not emigrated with my parents.

As I sat down with my congresswoman’s chief of staff, I truly felt like a participant in democracy; I was exercising my right to be heard as a young American. Through this educational conference, I developed a plan of action to raise my voice. When I returned home, I signed up to volunteer with the state chapter of the Democratic Party. I sponsored letter-writing campaigns, canvassed for local elections, and even pursued an internship with a state senate campaign. I know that I don’t need to be old enough to vote to effect change. Most importantly, I also know that I want to study government—I want to make a difference for my communities in the United States and the Middle East throughout my career. 

While this prompt is about extracurricular activities, it specifically references the idea that the extracurricular should support the curricular. It is focused on experiential learning for future career success. This student wants to study government, so they chose to describe an experience of hands-on learning within their field—an apt choice!

As this student discusses their extracurricular experience, they also clue readers into their future goals—they want to help Middle Eastern communities. Admissions officers love when students mention concrete plans with a solid foundation. Here, the foundation comes from this student’s ethnicity. With lines like “my whole life had led me to the moment when I could speak on behalf of the family members who had not emigrated with my parents,” the student assures admissions officers of their emotional connection to their future field.

The strength of this essay comes from its connections. It connects the student’s extracurricular activity to their studies and connects theirs studies to their personal history.

Overcoming Challenges

You’re going to face a lot of setbacks in college, so admissions officers want to make you’re you have the resilience and resolve to overcome them. This essay is your chance to be vulnerable and connect to admissions officers on an emotional level.

Learn more about how to write the Overcoming Challenges Essay in our guide.

The Student Becomes the Master

”Advanced females ages 13 to 14 please proceed to staging with your coaches at this time.” Skittering around the room, eyes wide and pleading, I frantically explained my situation to nearby coaches. The seconds ticked away in my head; every polite refusal increased my desperation.

Despair weighed me down. I sank to my knees as a stream of competitors, coaches, and officials flowed around me. My dojang had no coach, and the tournament rules prohibited me from competing without one.

Although I wanted to remain strong, doubts began to cloud my mind. I could not help wondering: what was the point of perfecting my skills if I would never even compete? The other members of my team, who had found coaches minutes earlier, attempted to comfort me, but I barely heard their words. They couldn’t understand my despair at being left on the outside, and I never wanted them to understand.

Since my first lesson 12 years ago, the members of my dojang have become family. I have watched them grow up, finding my own happiness in theirs. Together, we have honed our kicks, blocks, and strikes. We have pushed one another to aim higher and become better martial artists. Although my dojang had searched for a reliable coach for years, we had not found one. When we attended competitions in the past, my teammates and I had always gotten lucky and found a sympathetic coach. Now, I knew this practice was unsustainable. It would devastate me to see the other members of my dojang in my situation, unable to compete and losing hope as a result. My dojang needed a coach, and I decided it was up to me to find one. 

I first approached the adults in the dojang – both instructors and members’ parents. However, these attempts only reacquainted me with polite refusals. Everyone I asked told me they couldn’t devote multiple weekends per year to competitions. I soon realized that I would have become the coach myself.

At first, the inner workings of tournaments were a mystery to me. To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side. I learned everything from motivational strategies to technical, behind-the-scenes components of Taekwondo competitions. Though I emerged with new knowledge and confidence in my capabilities, others did not share this faith.

Parents threw me disbelieving looks when they learned that their children’s coach was only a child herself. My self-confidence was my armor, deflecting their surly glances. Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities.

Despite the attack, I refused to give up. When I saw the shining eyes of the youngest students preparing for their first competition, I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was. The knowledge that I could solve my dojang’s longtime problem motivated me to overcome my apprehension.

Now that my dojang flourishes at competitions, the attacks on me have weakened, but not ended. I may never win the approval of every parent; at times, I am still tormented by doubts, but I find solace in the fact that members of my dojang now only worry about competing to the best of their abilities.

Now, as I arrive at a tournament with my students, I close my eyes and remember the past. I visualize the frantic search for a coach and the chaos amongst my teammates as we competed with one another to find coaches before the staging calls for our respective divisions. I open my eyes to the exact opposite scene. Lacking a coach hurt my ability to compete, but I am proud to know that no member of my dojang will have to face that problem again.

This essay is great because it has a strong introduction and conclusion. The introduction is notably suspenseful and draws readers into the story. Because we know it is a college essay, we can assume that the student is one of the competitors, but at the same time, this introduction feels intentionally ambiguous as if the writer could be a competitor, a coach, a sibling of a competitor, or anyone else in the situation.

As we continue reading the essay, we learn that the writer is, in fact, the competitor. Readers also learn a lot about the student’s values as we hear their thoughts: “I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was.” Ultimately, the conflict and inner and outer turmoil is resolved through the “Same, but Different” ending technique as the student places themself in the same environment that we saw in the intro, but experiencing it differently due to their actions throughout the narrative. This is a very compelling strategy!

Growing Sensitivity to Struggles

Prompt: The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? (650 words)

“You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.

Despite being twins, Max and I are profoundly different. Having intellectual interests from a young age that, well, interested very few of my peers, I often felt out of step in comparison with my highly-social brother. Everything appeared to come effortlessly for Max and, while we share an extremely tight bond, his frequent time away with friends left me feeling more and more alone as we grew older.

When my parents learned about The Green Academy, we hoped it would be an opportunity for me to find not only an academically challenging environment, but also – perhaps more importantly – a community. This meant transferring the family from Drumfield to Kingston. And while there was concern about Max, we all believed that given his sociable nature, moving would be far less impactful on him than staying put might be on me.

As it turned out, Green Academy was everything I’d hoped for. I was ecstatic to discover a group of students with whom I shared interests and could truly engage. Preoccupied with new friends and a rigorous course load, I failed to notice that the tables had turned. Max, lost in the fray and grappling with how to make connections in his enormous new high school, had become withdrawn and lonely. It took me until Christmas time – and a massive argument – to recognize how difficult the transition had been for my brother, let alone that he blamed me for it.

Through my own journey of searching for academic peers, in addition to coming out as gay when I was 12, I had developed deep empathy for those who had trouble fitting in. It was a pain I knew well and could easily relate to. Yet after Max’s outburst, my first response was to protest that our parents – not I – had chosen to move us here. In my heart, though, I knew that regardless of who had made the decision, we ended up in Kingston for my benefit. I was ashamed that, while I saw myself as genuinely compassionate, I had been oblivious to the heartache of the person closest to me. I could no longer ignore it – and I didn’t want to.

We stayed up half the night talking, and the conversation took an unexpected turn. Max opened up and shared that it wasn’t just about the move. He told me how challenging school had always been for him, due to his dyslexia, and that the ever-present comparison to me had only deepened his pain.

We had been in parallel battles the whole time and, yet, I only saw that Max was in distress once he experienced problems with which I directly identified. I’d long thought Max had it so easy – all because he had friends. The truth was, he didn’t need to experience my personal brand of sorrow in order for me to relate – he had felt plenty of his own.

My failure to recognize Max’s suffering brought home for me the profound universality and diversity of personal struggle; everyone has insecurities, everyone has woes, and everyone – most certainly – has pain. I am acutely grateful for the conversations he and I shared around all of this, because I believe our relationship has been fundamentally strengthened by a deeper understanding of one another. Further, this experience has reinforced the value of constantly striving for deeper sensitivity to the hidden struggles of those around me. I won’t make the mistake again of assuming that the surface of someone’s life reflects their underlying story.

Here you can find a prime example that you don’t have to have fabulous imagery or flowery prose to write a successful essay. You just have to be clear and say something that matters. This essay is simple and beautiful. It almost feels like having a conversation with a friend and learning that they are an even better person than you already thought they were.

Through this narrative, readers learn a lot about the writer—where they’re from, what their family life is like, what their challenges were as a kid, and even their sexuality. We also learn a lot about their values—notably, the value they place on awareness, improvement, and consideration of others. Though they never explicitly state it (which is great because it is still crystal clear!), this student’s ending of “I won’t make the mistake again of assuming that the surface of someone’s life reflects their underlying story” shows that they are constantly striving for improvement and finding lessons anywhere they can get them in life.

Community Service/Impact on the Community

Colleges want students who will positively impact the campus community and go on to make change in the world after they graduate. This essay is similar to the Extracurricular Essay, but you need to focus on a situation where you impacted others. 

Learn more about how to write the Community Service Essay in our guide.

Academic Signing Day

Prompt: What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

The scent of eucalyptus caressed my nose in a gentle breeze. Spring had arrived. Senior class activities were here. As a sophomore, I noticed a difference between athletic and academic seniors at my high school; one received recognition while the other received silence. I wanted to create an event celebrating students academically-committed to four-years, community colleges, trades schools, and military programs. This event was Academic Signing Day.

The leadership label, “Events Coordinator,” felt heavy on my introverted mind. I usually was setting up for rallies and spirit weeks, being overlooked around the exuberant nature of my peers. 

I knew a change of mind was needed; I designed flyers, painted posters, presented powerpoints, created student-led committees, and practiced countless hours for my introductory speech. Each committee would play a vital role on event day: one dedicated to refreshments, another to technology, and one for decorations. The fourth-month planning was a laborious joy, but I was still fearful of being in the spotlight. Being acknowledged by hundreds of people was new to me.     

The day was here. Parents filled the stands of the multi-purpose room. The atmosphere was tense; I could feel the angst building in my throat, worried about the impression I would leave. Applause followed each of the 400 students as they walked to their college table, indicating my time to speak. 

I walked up to the stand, hands clammy, expression tranquil, my words echoing to the audience. I thought my speech would be met by the sounds of crickets; instead, smiles lit up the stands, realizing my voice shone through my actions. I was finally coming out of my shell. The floor was met by confetti as I was met by the sincerity of staff, students, and parents, solidifying the event for years to come. 

Academic students were no longer overshadowed. Their accomplishments were equally recognized to their athletic counterparts. The school culture of athletics over academics was no longer imbalanced. Now, every time I smell eucalyptus, it is a friendly reminder that on Academic Signing Day, not only were academic students in the spotlight but so was my voice.

This essay answers the prompt nicely because the student describes a contribution with a lasting legacy. Academic Signing Day will affect this high school in the future and it affected this student’s self-development—an idea summed up nicely with their last phrase “not only were academic students in the spotlight but so was my voice.”

With Community Service essays, students sometimes take small contributions and stretch them. And, oftentimes, the stretch is very obvious. Here, the student shows us that Academic Signing Day actually mattered by mentioning four months of planning and hundreds of students and parents. They also make their involvement in Academic Signing Day clear—it was their idea and they were in charge, and that’s why they gave the introductory speech.

Use this response as an example of the type of focused contribution that makes for a convincing Community Service Essay.

Climate Change Rally

Prompt: What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time? (technically not community service, but the response works)

Let’s fast-forward time. Strides were made toward racial equality. Healthcare is accessible to all; however, one issue remains. Our aquatic ecosystems are parched with dead coral from ocean acidification. Climate change has prevailed.

Rewind to the present day.

My activism skills are how I express my concerns for the environment. Whether I play on sandy beaches or rest under forest treetops, nature offers me an escape from the haste of the world. When my body is met by trash in the ocean or my nose is met by harmful pollutants, Earth’s pain becomes my own. 

Substituting coffee grinds as fertilizer, using bamboo straws, starting my sustainable garden, my individual actions needed to reach a larger scale. I often found performative activism to be ineffective when communicating climate concerns. My days of reposting awareness graphics on social media never filled the ambition I had left to put my activism skills to greater use. I decided to share my ecocentric worldview with a coalition of environmentalists and host a climate change rally outside my high school.

Meetings were scheduled where I informed students about the unseen impact they have on the oceans and local habitual communities. My fingers were cramped from all the constant typing and investigating of micro causes of the Pacific Waste Patch, creating reusable flyers, displaying steps people could take from home in reducing their carbon footprint. I aided my fellow environmentalists in translating these flyers into other languages, repeating this process hourly, for five days, up until rally day.  

It was 7:00 AM. The faces of 100 students were shouting, “The climate is changing, why can’t we?” I proudly walked on the dewy grass, grabbing the microphone, repeating those same words. The rally not only taught me efficient methods of communication but it echoed my environmental activism to the masses. The City of Corona would be the first of many cities to see my activism, as more rallies were planned for various parts of SoCal. My once unfulfilled ambition was fueled by my tangible activism, understanding that it takes more than one person to make an environmental impact.

Like with the last example, this student describes a focused event with a lasting legacy. That’s a perfect place to start! By the end of this essay, we have an image of the cause of this student’s passion and the effect of this student’s passion. There are no unanswered questions.

This student supplements their focused topic with engaging and exciting writing to make for an easy-to-read and enjoyable essay. One of the largest strengths of this response is its pace. From the very beginning, we are invited to “fast-forward” and “rewind” with the writer. Then, after we center ourselves in real-time, this writer keeps their quick pace with sentences like “Substituting coffee grounds as fertilizer, using bamboo straws, starting my sustainable garden, my individual actions needed to reach a larger scale.” Community Service essays run the risk of turning boring, but this unique pacing keeps things interesting.

Having a diverse class provides a richness of different perspectives and encourages open-mindedness among the student body. The Diversity Essay is also somewhat similar to the Extracurricular and Community Service Essays, but it focuses more on what you might bring to the campus community because of your unique experiences or identities.

Learn more about how to write the Diversity Essay in our guide.

A Story of a Young Skater

​​“Everyone follow me!” I smiled at five wide-eyed skaters before pushing off into a spiral. I glanced behind me hopefully, only to see my students standing frozen like statues, the fear in their eyes as clear as the ice they swayed on. “Come on!” I said encouragingly, but the only response I elicited was the slow shake of their heads. My first day as a Learn-to-Skate coach was not going as planned. 

But amid my frustration, I was struck by how much my students reminded me of myself as a young skater. At seven, I had been fascinated by Olympic performers who executed thrilling high jumps and dizzying spins with apparent ease, and I dreamed to one day do the same. My first few months on skates, however, sent these hopes crashing down: my attempts at slaloms and toe-loops were shadowed by a stubborn fear of falling, which even the helmet, elbow pads, and two pairs of mittens I had armed myself with couldn’t mitigate. Nonetheless, my coach remained unfailingly optimistic, motivating me through my worst spills and teaching me to find opportunities in failures. With his encouragement, I learned to push aside my fears and attack each jump with calm and confidence; it’s the hope that I can help others do the same that now inspires me to coach.

I remember the day a frustrated staff member directed Oliver, a particularly hesitant young skater, toward me, hoping that my patience and steady encouragement might help him improve. Having stood in Oliver’s skates not much earlier myself, I completely empathized with his worries but also saw within him the potential to overcome his fears and succeed. 

To alleviate his anxiety, I held Oliver’s hand as we inched around the rink, cheering him on at every turn. I soon found though, that this only increased his fear of gliding on his own, so I changed my approach, making lessons as exciting as possible in hopes that he would catch the skating bug and take off. In the weeks that followed, we held relay races, played “freeze-skate” and “ice-potato”, and raced through obstacle courses; gradually, with each slip and subsequent success, his fear began to abate. I watched Oliver’s eyes widen in excitement with every skill he learned, and not long after, he earned his first skating badge. Together we celebrated this milestone, his ecstasy fueling my excitement and his pride mirroring my own. At that moment, I was both teacher and student, his progress instilling in me the importance of patience and a positive attitude. 

It’s been more than ten years since I bundled up and stepped onto the ice for the first time. Since then, my tolerance for the cold has remained stubbornly low, but the rest of me has certainly changed. In sharing my passion for skating, I have found a wonderful community of eager athletes, loving parents, and dedicated coaches from whom I have learned invaluable lessons and wisdom. My fellow staffers have been with me, both as friends and colleagues, and the relationships I’ve formed have given me far more poise, confidence, and appreciation for others. Likewise, my relationships with parents have given me an even greater gratitude for the role they play: no one goes to the rink without a parent behind the wheel! 

Since that first lesson, I have mentored dozens of children, and over the years, witnessed tentative steps transform into powerful glides and tears give way to delighted grins. What I have shared with my students has been among the greatest joys of my life, something I will cherish forever. It’s funny: when I began skating, what pushed me through the early morning practices was the prospect of winning an Olympic medal. Now, what excites me is the chance to work with my students, to help them grow, and to give back to the sport that has brought me so much happiness. 

This response is a great example of how Diversity doesn’t have to mean race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, or ability. Diversity can mean whatever you want it to mean—whatever unique experience(s) you have to bring to the table!

A major strength of this essay comes in its narrative organization. When reading this first paragraph, we feel for the young skaters and understand their fear—skating sounds scary! Then, because the writer sets us up to feel this empathy, the transition to the second paragraph where the student describes their empathy for the young skaters is particularly powerful. It’s like we are all in it together! The student’s empathy for the young skaters also serves as an outstanding, seamless transition to the applicant discussing their personal journey with skating: “I was struck by how much my students reminded me of myself as a young skater.”

This essay positions the applicant as a grounded and caring individual. They are caring towards the young skaters—changing their teaching style to try to help the young skaters and feeling the young skaters’ emotions with them—but they are also appreciative to those who helped them as they reference their fellow staffers and parents. This shows great maturity—a favorable quality in the eyes of an admissions officer.

At the end of the essay, we know a lot about this student and are convinced that they would be a good addition to a college campus!

Finding Community in the Rainforest

Prompt: Duke University seeks a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger. If you’d like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you’ve had to help us understand you better—perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background—we encourage you to do so. Real people are reading your application, and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying to Duke (250 words).

I never understood the power of community until I left home to join seven strangers in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Although we flew in from distant corners of the U.S., we shared a common purpose: immersing ourselves in our passion for protecting the natural world.

Back home in my predominantly conservative suburb, my neighbors had brushed off environmental concerns. My classmates debated the feasibility of Trump’s wall, not the deteriorating state of our planet. Contrastingly, these seven strangers delighted in bird-watching, brightened at the mention of medicinal tree sap, and understood why I once ran across a four-lane highway to retrieve discarded beer cans. Their histories barely resembled mine, yet our values aligned intimately. We did not hesitate to joke about bullet ants, gush about the versatility of tree bark, or discuss the destructive consequences of materialism. Together, we let our inner tree huggers run free.

In the short life of our little community, we did what we thought was impossible. By feeding on each other’s infectious tenacity, we cultivated an atmosphere that deepened our commitment to our values and empowered us to speak out on behalf of the environment. After a week of stimulating conversations and introspective revelations about engaging people from our hometowns in environmental advocacy, we developed a shared determination to devote our lives to this cause.

As we shared a goodbye hug, my new friend whispered, “The world needs saving. Someone’s gotta do it.” For the first time, I believed that someone could be me.

This response is so wholesome and relatable. We all have things that we just need to geek out over and this student expresses the joy that came when they found a community where they could geek out about the environment. Passion is fundamental to university life and should find its way into successful applications.

Like the last response, this essay finds strength in the fact that readers feel for the student. We get a little bit of backstory about where they come from and how they felt silenced—“Back home in my predominantly conservative suburb, my neighbors had brushed off environmental concerns”—, so it’s easy to feel joy for them when they get set free.

This student displays clear values: community, ecoconsciousness, dedication, and compassion. An admissions officer who reads Diversity essays is looking for students with strong values and a desire to contribute to a university community—sounds like this student!  

Political/Global Issues

Colleges want to build engaged citizens, and the Political/Global Issues Essay allows them to better understand what you care about and whether your values align with theirs. In this essay, you’re most commonly asked to describe an issue, why you care about it, and what you’ve done or hope to do to address it. 

Learn more about how to write the Political/Global Issues Essay in our guide.

Note: this prompt is not a typical political/global issues essay, but the essay itself would be a strong response to a political/global issues prompt.

Fighting Violence Against Women

Prompt: Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation, title and author at the beginning of your essay. (250-650 words)

“One of the great challenges of our time is that the disparities we face today have more complex causes and point less straightforwardly to solutions.” 

– Omar Wasow, assistant professor of politics, Princeton University. This quote is taken from Professor Wasow’s January 2014 speech at the Martin Luther King Day celebration at Princeton University. 

The air is crisp and cool, nipping at my ears as I walk under a curtain of darkness that drapes over the sky, starless. It is a Friday night in downtown Corpus Christi, a rare moment of peace in my home city filled with the laughter of strangers and colorful lights of street vendors. But I cannot focus. 

My feet stride quickly down the sidewalk, my hand grasps on to the pepper spray my parents gifted me for my sixteenth birthday. My eyes ignore the surrounding city life, focusing instead on a pair of tall figures walking in my direction. I mentally ask myself if they turned with me on the last street corner. I do not remember, so I pick up the pace again. All the while, my mind runs over stories of young women being assaulted, kidnapped, and raped on the street. I remember my mother’s voice reminding me to keep my chin up, back straight, eyes and ears alert. 

At a young age, I learned that harassment is a part of daily life for women. I fell victim to period-shaming when I was thirteen, received my first catcall when I was fourteen, and was nonconsensually grabbed by a man soliciting on the street when I was fifteen. For women, assault does not just happen to us— its gory details leave an imprint in our lives, infecting the way we perceive the world. And while movements such as the Women’s March and #MeToo have given victims of sexual violence a voice, harassment still manifests itself in the lives of millions of women across the nation. Symbolic gestures are important in spreading awareness but, upon learning that a surprising number of men are oblivious to the frequent harassment that women experience, I now realize that addressing this complex issue requires a deeper level of activism within our local communities. 

Frustrated with incessant cases of harassment against women, I understood at sixteen years old that change necessitates action. During my junior year, I became an intern with a judge whose campaign for office focused on a need for domestic violence reform. This experience enabled me to engage in constructive dialogue with middle and high school students on how to prevent domestic violence. As I listened to young men uneasily admit their ignorance and young women bravely share their experiences in an effort to spread awareness, I learned that breaking down systems of inequity requires changing an entire culture. I once believed that the problem of harassment would dissipate after politicians and celebrities denounce inappropriate behavior to their global audience. But today, I see that effecting large-scale change comes from the “small” lessons we teach at home and in schools. Concerning women’s empowerment, the effects of Hollywood activism do not trickle down enough. Activism must also trickle up and it depends on our willingness to fight complacency. 

Finding the solution to the long-lasting problem of violence against women is a work-in-progress, but it is a process that is persistently moving. In my life, for every uncomfortable conversation that I bridge, I make the world a bit more sensitive to the unspoken struggle that it is to be a woman. I am no longer passively waiting for others to let me live in a world where I can stand alone under the expanse of darkness on a city street, utterly alone and at peace. I, too, deserve the night sky.

As this student addresses an important social issue, she makes the reasons for her passion clear—personal experiences. Because she begins with an extended anecdote, readers are able to feel connected to the student and become invested in what she has to say.

Additionally, through her powerful ending—“I, too, deserve the night sky”—which connects back to her beginning— “as I walk under a curtain of darkness that drapes over the sky”—this student illustrates a mastery of language. Her engagement with other writing techniques that further her argument, like the emphasis on time—“gifted to me for my sixteenth birthday,” “when I was thirteen,” “when I was fourteen,” etc.—also illustrates her mastery of language.

While this student proves herself a good writer, she also positions herself as motivated and ambitious. She turns her passions into action and fights for them. That is just what admissions officers want to see in a Political/Global issues essay!

Where to Get Feedback on Your College Essays

Once you’ve written your college essays, you’ll want to get feedback on them. Since these essays are important to your chances of acceptance, you should prepare to go through several rounds of edits. 

Not sure who to ask for feedback? That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review resource. You can get comments from another student going through the process and also edit other students’ essays to improve your own writing. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools.  Find the right advisor for you  to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Essay on Life in English for Children and Students

Table of Contents

Life has been bestowed upon us by the almighty and we all must value it. We should be thankful for all that we have and try to improve ourselves each day to build a better life. Technically, life is associated with feelings, growth and evolution. Like the plants have life because they grow; humans and animals have life as they feel sadness, happiness and they too grow.

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The journey of life may not always be smooth but we must keep going and stay positive all the times. Life is the most precious asset on this planet and must be protected irrespective of its form and appearance. Every species, not only humans, have a fundamental right to live their life, I whatever way they desire. Life is a gift of God to humanity and any attempt to disrupt or damage it will have undesirable consequences.

Long and Short Essay on Life in English

Here we have provided Long and Short Essay on Life in English, of varying lengths to help you with the topic in your exam.

These Life Essays are written in simple and easy language so that they can be easily remembered and can be presented when required.

You can choose any life essay as per your interest and need and present it during your school’s essay writing competition, debate completion or speech giving.

Also Check: Essay on Life on Mars

Short Essay on Life in 100 words – Life is Beautiful but Not a Bed of Roses

There is a lot of stress all around us these days. Most people complain about problems at office, issues in relationships and the growing competition in various fields. People are so engrossed in dealing with these issues that they don’t see the real beauty of life. There is so much more to life than these things. In fact, if we look at life closely, we will realize how beautiful it is. God has given us an abundance of everything. This is evident when we look at the nature. The trees, plants, rivers and sunlight – everything is in abundance and so is the energy that resides within us. This is the beauty of life.

However, this is not to say that life is a bed of roses. It is not! The problems and concerns of people are genuine. The rich, the poor, the educated, the uneducated, the beautiful and the not so beautiful – everyone has his/ her on set of problems. Life is not easy for anyone. However, we need to understand that this is how life is. If everything came easy we would not really value it. Life is beautiful in its own way and we should look for reasons to enjoy it and embrace its beauty amid the issues we are dealing with.

Essay on Life in 200 words – Challenges and Goals

Challenges are a part of life. We face different challenges at different points in life. While some people look at these challenges as an opportunity to learn something new others get disheartened and succumb to them. We learn many new things as we take on different challenges. These experiences make us a better person. We can overcome many challenges by setting goals. Goals give us the determination to achieve despite the hurdles.

Also Check: Speech on Aim of My Life

Dealing with Challenges

Challenges require us to get out of our comfort zone. These can be difficult to deal with. However, we must deal with them with courage and determination. Here are some ways to deal with the challenges in life:

No matter what the situation is we must deal with it calmly. We shall be able to think of a solution and act upon it only if we stay calm. If we stress about it continually we shall not be able to act wisely.

• Stay Determined

No matter how hard the situation gets, the key is to stay determined and keep going. We must not give up half way.

• Seek Help from Family and Friends

There is no harm in seeking help from family and friends whenever there is a need. However, we must not depend upon them completely.

Set Goals; Give Purpose to Life

It is important to set goals in life. We must set both long term and short term goals for our personal as well as professional life and work hard to achieve them. Goals give purpose to our life. To set goals, we must first understand what we want in life and then make a plan to achieve it. We must always set a time frame for achieving our goals.

While challenges take us through new experiences and make us stronger, goals help us stay focused. Both challenges and goals are important in life.

Essay on Life in 400 words – It is a Precious Gift

Life is a precious gift. It must be handled with care. We must be thankful to God for sending us on Earth and giving us such beautiful surroundings to live in. We must also be thankful to God for making us physically and mentally fit to live a wholesome life. Not just human beings, the life of animals, birds and plants is equally precious and we must value it too.

Also Check: Essay on Importance of Friends in our Life

Appreciate Life and Express Gratitude

We must appreciate the good in our life and express gratitude for the same. Many people are not happy with the way things go on in their life. They criticize almost everything and everyone around and develop a negative outlook. They need to understand that the fact that they have been given a life to live is in itself a big thing.

The fact that they are in good health is a reason to be thankful for. The fact that they are able and can work hard and make their life better is another reason to be grateful. They must appreciate what they have and be thankful for it. Everything else can be achieved with some effort.

Don’t Waste Life

Many people indulge in bad habits such as smoking, drinking and taking drugs. The havoc created post consuming these can be a threat to their life as well as the life of those around them. Many people drink and run over their car on innocent people killing them or injuring them badly. They even hurt themselves during such incidents. Besides, all these things have a negative impact on a person’s health.

They incur serious health problems over the time thus ruining their lives as well as the lives of their family members. They must understand that life is precious. We can lead a purposeful life and add value to it or waste it and end up in a mess. Many people realize this much later in life mostly after incurring a major problem. It is too late then and they cannot go back and relive their life properly. We must value this gift called life when there is still time and tread the right path to enjoy it.

God has given us a chance to live and enjoy the beauty of the nature. Life is a precious gift and we must all value it. We must express gratitude and stay positive to make the most of this gift given to us. We must also value the lives of those around us.

Essay on Life in 500 words – It is a Journey not a Destination

There is a mad rush all around us. In schools, offices, businesses and even in households – people are running around, chasing different things and trying to achieve things as fast as they can as if they are about to miss a train. This eagerness and restlessness to get somewhere is what they pass on to their kids too and it goes on and on. Where exactly do we want to reach? And how will we feel when we reach there? We need to slow down and ask ourselves these questions.

We must understand that life is a journey not a destination. This means that we need to go through it slowly and calmly enjoying every moment and making the most of it rather than rushing through it.

Also Check: Essay on Importance of Good Manners in Life

Find Happiness in Little Things

We often overlook the little things in life and keep chasing the bigger things believing they will give us happiness. While achieving our big dreams and goals does give us satisfaction however it is the little things in life that bring us true happiness. These are the things that bring a smile to our face later in life. For instance, parents keep telling their children to behave nicely, study dedicatedly and sleep on time.

They do all this to inculcate discipline in them. They want them to focus on their studies so that they can choose a good stream and build a rewarding career. They believe that all this will help them get a good life partner and build a happy personal life too. They have good intentions but are they really doing good to their children? In a way, no as they are stealing the precious moments of their lives that could be spent more joyfully.

Enjoy the Journey of Life; Don’t Rush Through it

The first twenty years of a person’s life are spent in mugging up their chapters and attempting to fetch good marks. Children are repeatedly told that they can enjoy once they get a good job. When they get a good job, they are asked to work hard to get to a good position in the company. Then they are told that they can enjoy their life after they reach a certain position.

When they reach a good position in the company, they require working hard to maintain the position. It is also time for them to plan a family and fulfill various responsibilities. They are then told that they can live peacefully and enjoy life once they retire. No one even thinks that they will not be left with the same enthusiasm, energy and zeal to enjoy life when they enter that age.

Life is happening now. We must enjoy it here and now and not wait to reach a certain position or phase of life to start living the way we want.

It is important to set goals and work hard towards achieving them. We must also set deadlines for our goals, stay focused and utilize our time wisely to achieve the desired result. What we should avoid is to rush towards them. We will come across many new things as we head towards our goals. All these will make us stronger and wiser. We should allow ourselves to see and experience these new things and learn from them rather than rushing towards the goal.

Also Check: Speech on Life

Long Essay on Life in 600 words – True Value of Life

We all have just one life. We are here on Earth for a limited period of time and do not know when our time will end. We must thus make the most of the time we have. We must do good deeds, help as much as we can, appreciate the beauty around us and stay positive. We must value life and be grateful for all that we have as not many are lucky to have the kind of life we do.

True Value of Life by Philosophers

Different philosophers, scholars and literary people have defined the true value of life in different ways. As per poet Henry David, “There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it.” “The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self”, said Albert Einstein.

On the other hand, Myles Munroe states, “The value of life is not in its duration. You are not important because of how long you live, you are important because of how effective you live.

Identify the Purpose of Life

Different people indulge in different activities each day. Some people study, some do the household chores, some work on business plans, some work for an employer and some just enjoy and vile away their time.

Some people accomplish more than one or two of these tasks each day. They keep working on these tasks day in and day out and may take a break on the weekends. They may plan a holiday for a day or two or roam around locally to rejuvenate but as the next week begins, they start with their routine tasks yet again. Whether they like it or not they keep slogging every day as they feel that this is what they are meant to do.

However, this is a wrong perception. These daily tasks are just a way to survive in this world. We study, tidy our house, cook food, go to work and earn money just so that we can live comfortably. This is not our real purpose of life. It does not add value to our soul.

God has sent us on this Earth with a purpose. We need to identify this purpose and work towards achieving it. Once we know the purpose and successfully achieve it, we must then understand how it can help those around us and look for ways to assist them. Each one of us has been bestowed with a special power or gift. We must share it with others to make the world a more beautiful place to live in.

Count Your Blessings

We must value everything and everyone in our life. Nothing in our life should be taken for granted. We must value our parents, our siblings, our friends, our job, our house, our belongings and everything God has bestowed on us. And above all, we must value our life.

We must be grateful to the almighty for giving us the ability to take care of ourselves. We must always look at the positive side of life. We should count our blessings and value them. God has given us so many things to appreciate and we must thank him by helping those around us. We must help them live a better life.

We are born to serve humanity and make this world a better place. We must be thankful for all that we have and stay humble. We are all blessed with some unique power. Our purpose is to identify it and use it for uplifting ourselves as well as everyone around us. This is the true value of our life.

Essay on Life FAQs

What is the life essay.

Life essay talks about experiences, challenges, and lessons learned throughout life's journey, shaping perspectives and values.

What is life short notes?

Life in short notes is a summary of moments, emotions, and discoveries, capturing the essence of our existence briefly.

What is a life essay?

A life essay delves into the meaning, purpose, and significance of existence, exploring individual perspectives on living.

What is life in 10 lines?

Life is a blend of joy and sorrow, moments of growth, connections with others, learning from experiences, and striving for happiness.

What is the essay of student life?

The essay on student life discusses the experiences, challenges, and learnings during the academic journey, shaping character and knowledge.

What is life an essay?

Life as an essay reflects on the chapters of existence, covering diverse experiences, emotions, and lessons learned.

What is life for a student?

For a student, life is about learning, exploring interests, facing challenges, making friendships, and preparing for the future.

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College Info

Many prospective college students want to know what to expect from the college experience before they hit campus. Does college actually match up with the idealized experience you see in movies? 

The truth about college is that it can be a lot of different things at once--exciting, nerve-wracking, adventuresome, stressful, and so much fun. 

A lot of what college will be like is ultimately up to some of the choices you make, but there are also some basically universal truths about what college is like that it’s worth learning about before you get to campus. In this article, we’ll demystify the core components of a college education for you, including academics, extracurriculars, college social life, time management, working while in school, and living arrangements . We’ll also give you five tips for getting the most out of your college experience. 

So, what is collegereally  like? Keep reading to find out!

While you might identify with this furry guy right now, our article will get you prepared for your college experience. 

An Introduction to College Life 

Going to college is basically like a trial run at #adulting. You’re mostly responsible for your own life, but you’re still learning a lot about what you want your future to look like and how to get there (and it’s still okay for you to wear pajamas in public). Plus, you’ll be figuring all of this out with a lot of help from your friends, classmates, professors, and university mentors.

While you will have access to tons of support while you’re in college, your unique experience will depend a lot on how you respond to some of the things about college life that are new and exciting...like living on your own, managing your commitments, and deciding how you spend your time. 

In the context of your newfound freedom, it's important to aim for balance . What “balance” looks like will be your choice, but thinking about how you want to approach the different demands on your time will help you thrive during your college years. 

To help you envision your future as a college student, we’ll answer the question, “What is college like?” in regard to six major aspects of the college experience: academics, extracurriculars, social life, time management, working while in school, and living arrangements.

Depending on the size of your college, you may find that some of your classes are held in large lecture halls.

What Is College Like in Terms of Academics?

The main point of going to college is getting a degree, right? Of course!

Since academics are the major reason you're in college, it stands to reason that your schoolwork will make up a big part of your college experience. We've decided to focus on two major aspects of your academic life: your major and your courseload. 

Your Academic Major 

At some point during your academic career, you'll have to declare a major . When you do this will depend on your university. Some schools ask you to declare a major when you apply, while others allow you to spend your freshman and sophomore years as "undeclared" (which just means you haven't chosen a major yet).

Because students can, and often do, change their majors during their college careers, your college courses are split into categories: your general education courses, your major courses, and your electives. 

One quick caveat: not all schools split their classes into the three categories above. For example, an art school may not require general education classes at all!

General Education Courses

It’s typical for students to complete what are usually called “general education” (gen ed) courses during their freshman and sophomore years of college. These are the core classes that all students have to take in order to graduate, regardless of their major. Gen ed courses are usually a mix of math, science, and humanities classes that are designed to ensure you're getting a well-rounded education.

Some students feel that gen ed courses are a waste of time, while others enjoy the opportunity to take classes in different subject areas and increase their general knowledge before moving into more specialized courses during their last two years of college. That's pretty normal, especially since gen ed courses are designed to broaden your knowledge base across a wide range of disciplines.

Major Courses

The other types of courses you'll take in college are your major courses. These are the classes you need to complete in order to earn a specific major!

Major classes differ from your gen ed courses in a few ways. First, they're much more specific than your gen ed classes. While you may take introductory courses to satisfy gen ed credits, your major classes are designed to take a deep dive into the topic you're studying.

For example, if you're majoring in biology, you'll have to take advanced classes like cell biology and biochemistry. Y ou may even have to declare an emphasis, or specialty, within your major ! For instance, some biology departments offer more specialized major programs in fields like neuroscience or microbiology . 

Sometimes, students will feel more pressure to do well once they get into these specialized courses, since it may feel like their performance in these courses reflects on their potential to do well in their future career. It’s also common for students to feel much more excited about and interested in attending their major’s courses since these courses fall into the subject area that you picked out yourself. 

One thing that’s important to know is that it’s totally normal to change your major or second-guess your choice of major . Choosing a career path is a big decision, and many students don’t feel ready to make that choice right when they start college. When you do settle on a major, though, you may also find that you have the chance to build relationships with faculty in your department. These relationships can be valuable when you need advice or a letter of recommendation . 

Electives 

Your high school may have allowed you to take elective courses , and most colleges do, too. Elective courses are classes that aren't specifically required by the university, your college, or your  department. Basically, elective courses are classes you get to choose to take because you're interested in them. 

Electives give you the freedom to explore topics outside of your major so that you can learn more about the world, develop new skills, or even earn a minor in a different subject . Elective courses give students a chance to shape their education into a unique experience that's a perfect fit for your future plans and goals. 

Many universities require that students take a certain number of elective classes before they graduate. Depending on your goals, you can use your electives to explore your interests, or you can leverage these slots in your degree plan to earn additional distinctions , like graduating with honors . If you plan ahead, you can even use electives to help you on your way to earning a double major ! 

You'll sign up for your courses at the beginning of each term. Universities usually have two or more terms per academic year. 

Your Class Schedule 

Future college students are often curious how difficult college classes will be. The truth is: it's hard to know! 

The difficulty of your classes will depend on your own abilities, your major, and the amount of effort and time you put into their courses. It’s generally true, though, that upper-level classes in a student’s major will be more demanding in terms of the workload and expectations than general education or prerequisite courses. 

Another thing that can make a student’s academic experience more challenging is their schedule of classes for the semester. Most universities list classes in terms of hours. A typical class is three hours, whereas a class with a lab component is usually four hours. In order to graduate, you'll have to earn a certain number of hours toward your degree, with a specific percentage of those being within your major field. 

The typical courseload for a full-time student is generally considered to be 15 hours. But you can take more (or less) depending on your needs! Regardless of how many hours you decide to take, working with your academic advisor to put together a schedule that is manageable for you in terms of workload and difficulty is very important. 

Keep in mind that taking more hours isn't always better...or even more efficient! If your 18 hour courseload is burning you out (and lowering your GPA), it probably makes more sense to reduce your courseload so you can be more successful. Additionally, a smaller courseload doesn't always mean it's going to be easier! Taking 15 hours of gen ed courses will probably be easier than taking 11 hours of upper-level major courses. Consequently, be sure you're thinking about the difficulty of each class as you build your schedule each semester. 

The great thing about college is that you also have a lot of flexibility around how you take your classes . Some students like to take all morning classes so that they can be done with class for the day around noon. Others like to take only afternoon classes so they can sleep in or study in the mornings. Some students try to put together a Tuesday/Thursday class schedule so they can have three days a week off from class, while other students schedule their courses around their work schedules! You can even take a mix of in-person and online courses if your campus offers the choice! Going to your advising appointments with an idea of what classes you need/want to take and the kind of schedule you’re hoping for in mind will help you work with your advisor to get the schedule you want. 

Building your class schedule each semester is fun, but be sure to have a back-up plan just in case. Classes can fill up quickly during registration, so having a back-up plan for your semester schedule is a good idea too. Working with your advisor to create two or three potential course plans can ensure that you're able to enroll in classes that help you meet your graduation requirements. 

College extracurriculars include everything from debate to sports. You'll definitely be able to find an extracurricular activity that suits you! 

What Is College Like in Terms of Extracurriculars?

The great thing about college extracurriculars is that students get to choose which ones they’re involved in. Just like high school, college extracurriculars are clubs, organizations, and activities you can participate in outside of the classroom. 

It’s common for college students to choose extracurriculars based on their hobbies, values, beliefs, or desire to be a part of a community. The main point of these activities, clubs, and organizations is to help students connect with others who have common interests or goals and support each other through the college experience.

Keep in mind that some collegiate extracurricular activities are more high-intensity than others. We’re talking about extracurricular activities that demand a lot of your time outside of class, host a lot of compulsory involvement activities, and strongly encourage participants to mold their college identity around their involvement in these extracurriculars. Three examples of high-intensity extracurriculars are fraternities and sororities, ROTC , and student government. If you want to be involved in organizations like these, you'll need to be extra diligent about building your course schedule and keeping up with your studies. 

But “high-intensity” doesn’t mean bad! Many students find that they thrive in extracurriculars that are built on consistency, accountability, and high expectations. Most of the time, too, these extracurriculars make students feel like they’re really a part of something and provide a close knit support system of peers to rely on during college and beyond. 

Some college students are more interested in being involved in extracurriculars that provide more flexibility in a relaxed, low-stress environment that still provides the opportunity to connect with others around a common interest. These lower intensity extracurriculars could include intramural sports, service-learning programs, campus festivals, concerts, lectures, or discussions to promote multicultural awareness. 

Involvement in extracurriculars might seem like an afterthought to the academic side of college life, but studies have actually shown that students who are involved in extracurricular activities gain essential life skills and are more likely to view their college years as a positive experience. Many students find that involvement in extracurriculars is an irreplaceable part of their college education and invest a lot of their non-academic time in this form of involvement.

The key to a successful college experience? Balancing your social life with your academics and other responsibilities!

What Is College Like in Terms of Social Life?

At most colleges, there are what will seem like endless opportunities for social engagements. Since a college is like its own little community, there are many social events that happen on-campus that are either free or very inexpensive for students to attend . These events can range from athletic competitions, to theatre productions, to fundraising or community service events, to events in the dorms, like movie nights or pancake suppers. 

It’s typical for there to be on-campus social events of some kind nearly every night of the week. One of the best things about on-campus social events is that they’re often free or heavily discounted for students. They’re also an opportunity to see or meet people who you don’t see everyday during class or in the dorm. 

For many students, getting to know the wider community in which their college is located is really important in addition to attending on campus social events. Many students get involved with local nonprofits or charities, churches or other religious groups, or attend events hosted by local businesses. Some on-campus organizations or clubs will even partner with groups in the community to host events. 

But you don't have to take our word for it. Lilly, a junior in college, gives this advice to incoming freshmen who are worried about having a social life during college:  

“If you’re bored and can’t find anything to do in college, you’re not looking hard enough. There are tons of events happening all around you. Take it upon yourself to learn where to find information about campus and community lectures, concerts and the like. Your school’s website is the best place to start.” 

At the end of the day, there are constant opportunities to enjoy college social life, if you put yourself out there. Some of the most fun and memorable moments during college are impromptu, like a dance party in the dorm hallways at midnight or a Mario Kart tournament in the dorm lobby. The key to having a positive social experience during college is to be open-minded and willing to put yourself out there. 

Many students work and attend school at the same time. Working can be a great way to help alleviate the cost of college! 

Can You Work While Going to College? 

Many college students work while they’re in school. There are two types of jobs that students often get while in college: on-campus jobs and off-campus jobs. 

On-Campus Jobs

Most universities offer many part-time job opportunities for students. These jobs can be found in almost every department on a university’s campus, from the health and wellness clinic, to the dorms, to the groundskeeping crew. Because they don’t require leaving campus, on-campus jobs are typically pretty competitive, especially the kind that put their student workers out there as the “face” of the university, like campus tour guide jobs for prospective students and parents.

While some of these jobs will be open to all students, others will be reserved for students who qualify for work study . In order to do so, you have to meet specific financial need requirements. You can learn more about work study--and how to qualify for it--in this artice !

Whether you have work study or not, if you want to work on campus, you'll need to keep your grades up. Some work-study jobs have minimum GPA requirements, and you don't want your work to interfere with your ability to apply for internships, grants, and awards that take your GPA into consideration.

Off-Campus Jobs

Unfortunately, on-campus jobs aren’t available to every college student, so many students get a part-time job off-campus. It’s common for businesses in college towns to hire college students, both during the school year and over the summer/holiday breaks. 

If you're considering working off-campus as a full-time student, you'll need to think about how to balance your classes and extracurriculars with your work responsibilities. Many off-campus jobs, particularly in food services or customer service industry, require you to work an evening schedule and/or weekend schedule. Keeping that in mind can help you be proactive about managing your academics and your work responsibilities. 

Working during college doesn't mean you won’t have any time to study or engage in college social life. It just means you have to manage your time and communicate clearly with your supervisor about your unavailability. In fact, many students enjoy working while attending school because it gives them professional experience and more financial freedom. 

Many students live on-campus in dormitories for at least a portion of their college careers. But there are off-campus housing options, too. 

Where Will You Live During College?

One of the most exciting things about going to college for many students is living on your own. There are two main types of living arrangement options at most colleges: on-campus housing, and off-campus housing. We’ll break down these two types of college living arrangements next. 

On-Campus Housing

On-campus housing refers to dormitories (sometimes called “residence halls”) and apartment-style living that is located on a university’s campus. 

Many students love this housing option because it usually gives students the option to walk to class, the library, and on-campus dining. Living on-campus also makes many students feel that they’re more involved in campus social life since the university is right outside their front door... literally. 

Each university determines who can or can't live on campus, but it’s pretty common for there to be dorms dedicated to first-year students and optional on-campus housing opportunities for upperclassmen or non-traditional students. In many cases, the dorm situation is a bit like its stereotype: there are roommates, community bathrooms, study groups in the hallways, and Resident Assistants or Advisors (RAs) who will check in to make sure you’re doing well. 

But there are a lot of variations to dorm-style housing that students can often choose from. Some dorms offer single rooms (without a roommate!) and private bathrooms. Others offer suite or pod-style housing, where students share a centralized common room with, say, four other individual dorm rooms. Some suites even have a private kitchenette! At some schools, dorms are separated based on gender, while others offer co-ed housing options. 

Probably the most exciting thing about living on-campus is the opportunity to spend more time with your friends and classmates. In a dorm situation, there’s almost always someone studying in the hallway, having a movie night in their room, or hanging in the lobby playing games. There are usually quite a few shenanigans, too! On the other hand, though, you can always close your door and take some time to yourself. Living on campus gives you the opportunity to be as social and involved as you feel comfortable with. 

Off-Campus Housing

There’s also the option of off-campus housing. Many juniors and seniors will choose this housing option, but some schools also allow freshmen and sophomores to opt for off-campus housing as well . The types of off-campus housing that are available and affordable usually depends on the town or city your college is located in. It’s common for off-campus college students to rent apartments, townhouses, or regular houses and live with roommates to keep the costs affordable. 

Finding off-campus housing is a bit different from signing up to live on-campus in the dorms. With off-campus housing, it’s going to be your responsibility to find an apartment, put in an application, and have conversations with friends about splitting rent and bills. That means you'll have to be proactive about finding off-campus housing! 

It’s also important to think about who you’re willing to live with for a year (or longer) . Unlike in the dorms, there won’t be an RA to help mediate disagreements about the living space, and it’ll be much more difficult to get out of a rental agreement in a house or apartment. Choose your roommates wisely! Just because you're BFFs with a person doesn't mean you'll be able to cohabitate well.  

Besides finding roommates for off-campus housing, many students wonder if they’ll become disconnected from campus life if they move off-campus. You might have to make more of an effort to get to campus and spend time attending events there. On the flip side, if you live off-campus your junior and senior year, you might have a core group of friends established already, and enjoy the opportunity to hang out in your own spaces away from campus. So really, you'll be able to dictate how involved you are (or aren't!) once you move into off-campus housing. 

No matter what your major is, you'll need to develop time management skills to stay on top of your academics. (Managing your time will also help you fit fun things into your schedule, too!) 

How Do College Students Manage Their Time? 

The last aspect of college life that we’ll address is time management, because it plays a big role in shaping what a college student’s experience will be like in all of the other areas described here. Developing a time management plan will allow you to dedicate your time to several different things during college without becoming burnt out along the way. 

Everyone is unique, which means you'll have to experiment to find the time management tactics that work best for you. Digital reminders are a good motivator for some students, while others like to keep a paper calendar on the wall of their dorm room. Whatever your approach to time management, it’s important that you figure out your time management techniques early in your college career. That way you stay on top of your work, keep your GPA up, and can still have a great time! 

Additionally, college students will tell you that it’s important to prioritize the academic side of college life in your time management strategy. Brooke, a student in New York , says this: 

“ Put your classes first . I know this sounds crazy, especially if you’re a freshman, you might be thinking, ‘Of course I’ll go to class!’. But in college, not everyone goes to class. Especially if it’s in a mass lecture hall and [the professors] aren’t taking attendance, it’s really easy to skip and be like, ‘I’m just not gonna go’. But I don’t agree with that. I think that the first step to success in school is going to class.” 

Brooke’s advice on how to make sure you make it to class every time? Use your planner. You can check out our favorite digital and physical planners that will set you up for academic success in this article . Even if you didn't use a planner in high school, you'll need to get into the habit in college if you want to keep all of your assignments, due dates, and extracurricular activities straight. 

In general, most college students will tell you that the only bad time management strategy is not having one at all! They’d also probably tell you that no one is perfect, and that’s okay. There will probably be at least a handful of times when you forget about a quiz or have to study at the last minute. If you’re doing your best, just cut yourself some slack when you have an off-day. It happens to every college student sometimes! You just want to avoid making it a habit. 

While college can be tough, following our advice can make sure you don't feel like Grizzled Leonardo DiCaprio by the time you graduate.

4 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your College Experience

Since much of what college is like will be up to you, here are four tips for getting everything you can out of these four years of your life!

Tip 1: Get a Planner

We already mentioned this, but it's worth saying again: if you want to make the most of the time you have in college, get and use a planner . Planning how to spend your time on a daily and weekly basis is key to your overall success. 

Budgeting your time well allows you to really enjoy your leisure time too. When you're on top of your schedule, you don't have to stress out about when you'll do your homework or if you'll have a few hours to relax. You'll already have those things mapped out! Keeping up with a planner takes consistency and commitment, but the time and stress it will save you is worth it in the grand scheme of your college experience. 

Tip 2: Get Involved

One of the best things about college life is the chance to be a part of a community of peers in a place that is totally dedicated to facilitating a positive experience for you. The more you put yourself out there and get involved in that community, the more likely it is that you’ll feel like your college is a place where you belong. 

Pursuing extracurricular activities and attending social events on campus is the best way to meet new people, make friends, and find people to make memories with during college. Feeling connected to the people around you can make college feel like a home away from home--and that’s never a bad thing. 

Tip 3: Be Present

There’s nothing wrong with snagging some quality pics for your Insta story or keeping in touch with family/friends back home, but one of the best ways to feel like you’re having meaningful experiences in your college social life is by just being present. When you get to know your dorm neighbors, chat with the person sitting next to you in class, or strike up a convo with the person in line behind you at a coffee shop, you open yourself up to new knowledge, new relationships, and powerful memories from your college years. 

It may be tempting to go home to visit old friends every weekend or hide out in your room, especially at the beginning of college, but taking the plunge and allowing yourself to dive into the newness of college will help you feel more invested in making it a positive experience.

Tip 4: Work Hard

Since it sometimes feels like there’s endless free time in college, it can be easy to put off the difficult parts of the experience, like studying for tests, getting homework done, and writing essays. Most students want to do well in their classes and make good grades, but it can be hard to feel motivated if it seems like everyone around you is somehow always out having fun instead of hitting the books.

Though it might be a drag at the time, working hard on a consistent basis --especially early in the semester--will make the academic side of your college experience less painful in the long run. When you pay attention in class, show up consistently, and study hard, you save yourself from having to retake courses, pull all-nighters during finals week, or beg your professors for extra credit at the end of the semester. 

What's Next? 

You've probably realized that college can be pretty dang awesome. We agree! Now it's time to focus on getting in. This article will give you a general overview of the college application process. You can learn even more about specific aspects of your application, like your admissions essays and entrance interviews , on our blog ! We have tons of amazing resources for college hopefuls, so be sure to check it out.

One of the keys to having a great college experience is picking a school that's right for you . The good news is that there are tons of colleges out there! The bad news is that it can be hard to narrow the field down. Learn more about how to choose your potential schools here .

For some students, academics are the most important part of choosing their dream school . If that's the case for you, be sure to check out our guide to the top academic colleges in the United States .

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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5 Reasons Why Your Life Feels Pointless

Where did you get lost on the search for a meaningful life.

Posted August 31, 2022 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

• We often absorb unhelpful messages about what our life should be.
• Failing to live up to our internal expectations of a good life can cause despair.
• Radically redefine your assumptions about what makes a good life.

When thrashing through a sea of suffering, meaning is the metaphorical life preserver. That’s why worrying that your life is pointless feels a lot like drowning. If your life feels devoid of purpose, I would like to invite you not to panic . This is an excellent place from which to reassess your assumptions about existence.

At some point, you went off-course from your societally prescribed Meaningful Life. Yes, you may be lost–but you don’t have to stay that way. Let’s go find where your meaning went missing.

You're Using the Wrong Measuring Stick

You want to live a meaningful life–a life that has a point. First, let’s assess your definition of “meaning.”

Meaning is not happiness , success, comfort, or health.

Meaning is simply a sense of significance. I don’t mean fame, because even the famous get swallowed by time. I don’t mean having a big impact on the world because any impact you can have is tiny in the scale of the infinite universe.

Here’s a pocket-sized definition of meaning: if you have been of service to even one other living creature at any point in your life, you have achieved a meaningful life. That time you were patient with the stressed-out grocery store clerk. When you avoided stepping on the ladybug. It doesn’t matter if it was small. We are all small.

And perhaps your meaning is to simply be here–to be a part of the natural world, just like the trees and the animals. Maybe it matters that you are here simply because you are here.

You're Aiming at the Wrong Target

Close your eyes and picture this: a good life .

If you grew up in Western culture, you might have pictured financial security, thrilling travel, and a comfortable home containing a healthy family. This isn’t a bad target–it just isn’t the best target for everyone.

Capitalist culture teaches us that achievement, productivity , and consumption are the keys to a good life. But holding up this “good life” as your purpose can leave you owning plenty and feeling empty.

In lieu of productivity, many of us strive for longevity with admirable diligence. We eat organic vegetables, get cardiovascular exercise, and worship at the altar of health. Until illness and aging catch up to us and consume our fervent project.

By investing in a narrow view of success, we reduce life to a list of tasks. Get up, go to work, come home, eat your fiber, spend 50 minutes on the treadmill, sleep eight hours, repeat.

In this way of being, people who dutifully grind through the work of life without ever reaching success are left with only despair. And those who achieve success sense, uneasily, the inherent unfairness of the world – that they live in comfort while others struggle for no compelling reason.

It is not wise to invest your life’s purpose in something that can slip through your fingers so quickly.

You’re Afraid to Radically Reassess

So here you are, throwing your assumptions about life out with the garbage–scary! Confusing! It’s like building an IKEA couch with a time limit, except you’ve burned the instructions, and it turns out the couch is actually a table.

Many of us cling to our old ways of being, ways that we know lead only to suffering, to avoid the existential vacuum. But figuring out your purpose is the work of life. Humans have been doing this since ancient times. You’re in good company.

Maybe you’re reassessing your life because you’ve achieved your goals and still feel empty. Maybe your original goal was taken from you–a lost career , a health crisis, a financial calamity. You’ve faced the painful reality that your original life’s goal can lead only to meaninglessness.

Now, dear friend, it’s time to pursue a new meaning.

You’re Trying to Do It Alone

Here’s one tip: dream small. Not because you should keep your expectations low, but because small acts can have great significance.

We love stories of individuals striking out on their own to overcome great personal struggles. It’s inspiring when that happens, but that model doesn’t work for everyone, perhaps including you.

We need other people. Excluding others from your journey of meaning can lead further to isolation and emptiness. If you find yourself unsure that your life has any point, it might be time to expand your community–to be of service to others, and to let them be of service to you. You can develop a lived sense that your life is significant to others.

Even if you don’t particularly enjoy people or don’t have a community available, you can still play a meaningful role in the world around you. Familiarize yourself and cultivate connections with living things–even plants and animals. Maybe you will be the caretaker of a lovely garden. Perhaps you will become a rescuer of stray cats. Maybe your life’s purpose is to run a garden full of well-fed stray cats, oxygen-producing plants, and native bees. You get to pick.

You Assume Meaninglessness is Bad

Let’s assume the worst-case scenario: all our lives are meaningless. Meaningless! No point. Empty void. A floating speck in an expanding, inhospitable universe. Does that have to be a bad thing? Does an insignificant life mean that it isn’t worth living?

I invite you to radically challenge your assumptions about a life worth living.

Humans are surrounded by an ecosystem teeming with life. Not just plants and animals, but minuscule fungi and microorganisms too small to see with a naked eye. They’re living in your body, on your skin. You yourself are an ecosystem, layered with millions of lives of which you have no conscious awareness.

Perhaps this is all meaningless–simply an explosion of biochemistry. But is it not also beautiful?

Maybe it’s time to unlearn your negative assumptions of meaninglessness. Put down your expectations for what you should be. Lean into our tiny, lovely slice of the universe’s chaos.

To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.

Amanda Stuckey Dodson, LCSW , is a therapist in private practice, specializing in the treatment of eating disorders and meaning-making after trauma.

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What Old Age Is Really Like

By Ceridwen Dovey

What does it feel like to be old? Not middle-aged, or late-middle-aged, but one of the members of the fastest-growing demographic: the “oldest old,” those aged eighty-five and above? This has been the question animating me for a couple of years, as I’ve tried to write a novel from the perspective of a man in his late eighties. The aging population is on our collective minds; a statistic that intrigued me is that the average life expectancy in the U.K.—and, by extension, most of the rich West—is increasing by more than five hours a day, every day. I’m in my mid-thirties, but felt confident that I could imagine my way into old age. How hard could it be, really?

Somewhere along the way, though, things went wrong. My protagonist became Generic Old Man: crabby, computer illiterate, grieving for his dementia-addled wife. Not satisfied to leave him to his misery, I forced on him a new love interest, Eccentric Old Woman: radical, full of energy, a fan of wearing magenta turbans and handing out safe-sex pamphlets outside retirement homes.

In other words, I modelled my characters on the two dominant cultural constructions of old age: the doddering, depressed pensioner and the ageless-in-spirit, quirky oddball. After reading the first draft, an editor I respect said to me, “But what else are they, other than old?” I was mortified, and began to ask myself some soul-searching questions that I should have answered long before I’d written the opening word.

The first was: Why did I so blithely assume that I had the right to imagine my way into old age—and that I could do it well—when I would approach with extreme caution the task of imagining my way into the interior world of a character of a different gender, race, or class? Had I assumed that anybody elderly who might happen to read the book would simply be grateful that someone much younger was interested in his or her experience, and forgive my stereotyping?

The conundrum of who has the authority to write about old age is that, unlike the subjective experience of most imagined Others, seniority is something that many of us will eventually experience for ourselves. By contrast, I can imagine what it might be like to be a man, for example, but won’t ever know for sure. As the literary scholar Sarah Falcus writes, building on the work of Sally Chivers, “We may all have a more mobile relationship to age than to other perspectives or subject positions … because we are all aging at any one moment.” Yet just because I may, one day, know if I got it right—perhaps, to my surprise, I will find the world of my own old age populated entirely by grumpy old men and old women who are either lost to dementia or sprightly and renegade—doesn’t mean that I should be cavalier about how I imagine my elderly characters now. Of course, like any fictional representation, old age can be done well or badly regardless of one’s own positioning as an author, but there’s less chance of being called out on hackneyed depictions of old age, in part because those in the know—the over-eighty-five-year-olds themselves—haven’t historically had any cultural power.

Stereotypes of old age, whether positive or negative, do real harm in the real world, argues Lynne Segal, the author of “Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing” (2013). She says that the biggest problem for many older people is “ageism, rather than the process of aging itself.” There is no possibility of diversified, personal approaches to aging if we are all reductively “aged by culture,” to use the age critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s iconic phrase, from her 2004 book, “Aged by Culture.” Gullette highlights the limitations of having only two socially accepted narratives of aging: stories of progress or stories of decline. Neither does justice to the “radical ambiguities” of old age, Segal says. We’re forced either to lament or to celebrate old age, rather than simply “affirm it as a significant part of life.”

Old age is perplexing to imagine in part because the definition of it is notoriously unstable. As people age, they tend to move the goalposts that mark out major life stages: a 2009 survey of American attitudes toward old age found that young adults (those between eighteen and twenty-nine) said that old age begins at sixty; middle-aged respondents said seventy; and those above the age of sixty-five put the threshold at seventy-four. We tend to feel younger as we get older: almost half the respondents aged fifty or more reported feeling at least ten years younger than their actual age, while a third of respondents aged sixty-five or more said that they felt up to nineteen years younger.

The researchers also found “a sizable gap between the expectations that young and middle-aged adults have about old age and the actual experiences reported by older Americans themselves.” Young and middle-aged adults anticipate the “negative benchmarks” associated with aging (such as memory loss, illness, or an end to sexual activity) at much higher levels than the old report experiencing them. However, the elderly also report experiencing fewer of the benefits that younger adults expect old age to bring (such as more time for travel, hobbies, or volunteer work).

These perceptual gaps between generations are large and persistent. Simone de Beauvoir, in her exhaustive study “The Coming of Age” (published in 1970, when she was sixty-two), wrote, “Old age is particularly difficult to assume because we have always regarded it as something alien, a foreign species.” The anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff, who made the documentary film “In Her Time,” about a community of elderly Californians, when she was in her forties, believed that “we are dehumanized and impoverished without our old people, for only by contact with them can we come to know ourselves.”

Even more confusingly, we don’t experience old age identically. As Germaine Greer puts it, “Nobody ages like anybody else.” The poet Fleur Adcock, who is eighty-one, says “this great range of abilities and states of health confuses the young: they can’t figure us out.” We age as individuals and as members of particular social contexts, yet the shared experience of old age continues to be overstated. The eighty-two-year-old British novelist Penelope Lively writes that her demographic has “nothing much in common except the accretion of years, a historical context, and a generous range of ailments.” At the same time, though, she warns that aging is such a “commonplace experience” that nobody should “behave as though … uniquely afflicted.”

The actress Juliet Stevenson, who is in her late fifties, recently commented that “as you go through life it gets more and more interesting and complicated, but the parts offered get more and more simple, and less complicated.” The same could be said for the dearth of good roles for old characters in literature. Lively believes that “old age is forever stereotyped … from the smiling old dear to the grumbling curmudgeon.” In fiction, she says, the stereotypes “are rife—indeed fiction is perhaps responsible for the standard perception of the old, with just a few writers able to raise the game.”

I started to realize that, in creating my spunky elderly female character, I had romanticized the version of old age that tells a story of progress, indulging a fantasy of who I might be when I’m old. When writing her, I had been thinking of Jenny Joseph’s “Warning,” regularly voted the U.K.’s favorite postwar poem, in which the young speaker imagines with longing the freedoms of rebellious old age and the prospect of making up for the “sobriety of youth.” I’m hardly a renegade now, however, so why did I harbor the illusion that as I get older I will somehow throw off the shackles of propriety? Most of what has been written in the sociological literature about life in our seventies, eighties, and nineties suggests that who we are when we are old remains pretty close to who we were when we were young. There is comfort in the idea of some consistency of self across the decades. While sometimes distressing, the denialism of old age—think of the sixty-three-year-old Freud’s horror at realizing that the elderly gentleman he’s glimpsed on the train is in fact his own reflection, or the scientist Lewis Wolpert’s lament, “How can a seventeen-year-old like me suddenly be eighty-one?”—is also proof of our ability to remain on intimate terms with younger versions of ourself. “Live in the layers, / not on the litter,” as the Stanley Kunitz poem goes, and he knew what he was talking about: he became Poet Laureate of the United States at the age of ninety-five.

Another aspect of my fantasy was that old age is a consistently satisfying bookend to a shapely arc of a life, a time for getting things in order. But in this, I was ignoring the fact that old people are just as vulnerable to disorder, not to mention happenstance, caprice, and bad luck, as anybody else. Grasping for closure might be the goal of fiction, but it is not necessarily the lived experience of old age. As Helen Small writes in “The Long Life,” her study of the literature and philosophy of old age, “declining to describe our lives as unified stories … is the only way we can hope to live out our time other than as tragedy.” Lively describes the frustrations of autobiographical memory in old age. “The novelist in me—the reader, too—wants shape and structure, development, a theme, insights,” she writes. “Instead of which, there is this assortment of slides, some of them welcome, others not at all, defying chronology, refusing structure.” After reading the stories in “Stone Mattress,” by Margaret Atwood, who is now seventy-five, I began to question my portrayal of old age as a time for the tying up of loose ends; as one reviewer wrote , Atwood’s stories depict “the stored-up rancour that one can amass over the years.” Many of her characters express a desire for revenge over reconciliation.

I’m not alone, among my generation, in falling into this trap of positive stereotyping. A friend my age who is in medical school recently chose to specialize in geriatrics, and over drinks with some other doctors she was asked why. “Because I love old people,” she replied. “I like hearing their stories and what they have to say about the world.” One of the doctors made a dismissive sound. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Old people are just regular people who happen to be old.” My friend stuck with geriatrics, but realized that she had been fostering an idealized notion of the elderly. “At the end of the day,” she told me, “an old person can be just as trying as any other person; just as messy, just as unthankful.” She has also become wary of her instinctual empathy impulse when dealing with elderly patients. In this, she draws on the academic work of Kate Rossiter, who advocates fostering “ethical responsibility” rather than empathy in medical practitioners. “There’s something almost greedy about empathy, because it relies on the notion that we can somehow assimilate the other,” my friend explained. “A respectful and thoughtful distance is also part of what enables us to respond to the other’s needs.”

A few years before he died, at the age of eighty-nine, the literary critic Frank Kermode wrote that “the young know nothing directly about old age and their inquiries into the topic must be done blind.” Perhaps this is why younger artists seem to get waylaid by the same tropes: we are sometimes tempted to imagine old age as one big, funny, wisdom-rich adventure, with the comic caper a stalwart of the form, from the film “Grumpy Old Men” to the novel (and later film) “The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared” (one film critic has dubbed this genre Old People Behaving Hilariously). At the other extreme are the mind-disease psycho-dramas that we might call Old People Behaving Terrifyingly—recent novels like “The Farm” or “Elizabeth is Missing,” or the films “Iris” or “The Iron Lady.” As Sally Chivers argues in “The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema” (2011), “in the public imagination … old age does not ever escape the stigma and restraints imposed upon disability.”

There are notable exceptions, of course, and too many to mention in full here. Lynne Segal, the author who warned against the negative impact of stereotypes of old age, admires the work of Julian Barnes. Even as a young writer, she believes, he had an uncanny ability to write old age well. Perhaps this is because he is a “thanataphobe,” as he puts it in his recent memoir, “Nothing to Be Frightened Of” (published when he was sixty-two); that is, he is more afraid of death than of old age, and so his elderly characters—in, say, “Staring at the Sun” (published when Barnes was forty)—are void, to Segal, of “any of the customary expressions of horror accompanying the portrayals of old age.” In this way, Barnes also manages to capture the unexpected indifference of many old people to death; as Lively has written, “Many of us who are on the last lap are too busy with the baggage of old age to waste much time anticipating the finish line.”

The Scottish writer Muriel Spark has also been commended by authors who are themselves elderly, including Lively and her fellow British novelist Paul Bailey, as proof that a young writer can successfully make a leap into the imagined territory of old age. Spark was only forty-one in 1959, when she published her novel “Memento Mori,” a black comedy about a group of nursing-home residents who begin receiving mysterious phone calls from an anonymous caller who announces portentously, as if it were unknown to them already, “Remember you must die.” Lively lauds the book for its “bunch of sharply drawn individuals, convincingly old, bedeviled by specific ailments, and mainly concerned with revisions of their past.” V. S. Pritchett, in an introduction to a 1964 edition of “Memento Mori,” praised Spark for taking on “the great suppressed and censored subject of contemporary society, the one we do not care to face, which we regard as indecent: old age.”

A more recent example is the thirty-seven-year-old Australian author Fiona McFarlane’s 2013 début novel, “The Night Guest.” McFarlane’s protagonist, Ruth, though succumbing to dementia and at the mercy of an unreliable caregiver, is capable of seeing beauty or taking great pleasure in her present—in a sexual encounter, for example—while also deriving equal parts enjoyment and pain from memories of her unusual past. She is neither hilarious nor terrifying. McFarlane says that, while writing Ruth, she thought of her as “an individual who, at seventy-five, is the sum of years of experience, memory, opinion, prejudice, decision-making, and desire.”

But why search for depictions of old age by the young when I should instead be seeking out narratives by natives of old age? I don’t mean the rich body of work by late-middle-aged authors, which tends to be more about the fear of aging than about the experience of old age itself (fiction by Martin Amis, for example, or, further back, T. S. Eliot’s poetry), but literature written by authors aged seventy-five and older.

I started off thinking that, beyond the well-known examples of Saul Bellow (whose final novel, “Ravelstein,” was published when he was eighty-five), Thomas Mann (who died at the age of eighty, and who supposedly claimed that old age was the best time to be a writer), May Sarton (called “America’s poet laureate of aging,” who died at the age of eighty-three), and John Updike (who died at the age of seventy-six, and who, in his final story collection, has a narrator musing, “Approaching eighty I sometimes see myself from a little distance, as a man I know, but not intimately”), the pickings would be fairly slim. Bellow’s own biographer mused, after the publication of “Ravelstein,” “Who are the other great writers who have done anything like this in their eighties?”

Frank Kermode summed up the problem: “Those who have had actual experience of old age are likely to be dead or very tired or just reluctant to discuss the matter with clever young interlocutors.” Philip Roth, for example, who is now eighty-two, decided to retire from writing at the age of seventy-eight, after the publication of his quartet of “Nemeses” novels, saying in an interview about fiction, “I don’t want to read any more, write any more of it, I don’t even want to talk about it anymore ... I’m tired of all that work. I’m in a different stage of my life.”

But if you dig deeper the vista opens up, the voices multiply. My little sample may be idiosyncratic, and biased in favor of eloquence—these are elderly writers, all over the age of seventy-five, who clearly still have their wits very much about them. Yet their take on old age can perhaps offset some of the delusions and fantasies of people like me, who have not yet lived it for themselves. Each of the following three authors is alive and still writing prolifically, and was gracious enough to answer a few questions from me by e-mail.

The first is the British novelist Paul Bailey, who is seventy-eight, and who published his first novel, “At the Jerusalem,” at the age of thirty. It’s set in an institution for the elderly, and the main character, Faith, is a woman in her seventies, who Bailey says he purposefully did not make “likeable or sympathetic,” as he didn’t want her to be an object of pity. “I can’t begin to tell you how patronized and stereotyped the elderly were at that time: put-upon plaster saints were the dramatic order of the day,” he told me. Critics wondered why a young man would choose to write about the elderly in his first novel, but Bailey says he took inspiration from two other first novels by young male writers, also focussed on institutions of old age: Updike’s “The Poorhouse Fair” (1959) and William Trevor’s “The Old Boys” (1964). Bailey felt confident that his take on old age was grounded in real observation and experience, as his parents had been advanced in age when they had him, and he was later cared for by a much older couple. “I grew up among people who were getting on in years, so old age was never a frightening surprise to me,” he says. “I didn’t regard pensioners as a race apart.”

He remembers a mime class that he took when he was training to be an actor at London’s Central School, in the mid-nineteen-fifties. “We had to pretend to be old. Most of the students elected to bend their heads down and shuffle their feet. None of the old people I knew, especially my forbidding grandmother, walked or moved in this manner. My classmates were succumbing to easy caricature.” He doesn’t think much has changed today. “More sentimental rubbish has been written about the ‘plight of the elderly’ than I can bear to contemplate,” he wrote in a preface to a Guardian article in which he selected his top ten narratives of old age. (He praises work by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Alice Munro, and Stefan Zweig; the readers’ comments to the article are a good resource for anybody looking for further recommendations). And sentimentality can be pernicious. In a Paris Review interview, the Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe, who is now eighty, mentioned Flannery O’Connor’s warning: “She said that sentimentality is an attitude that does not confront reality squarely in the face. To feel sorry for handicapped people … is equivalent to hiding them.”

Bailey told me that he thinks some of the best depictions of old people “can be found in books and plays that aren’t specifically concerned with people getting old,” citing the memoirs of Sergei Aksakov, Maxim Gorky, and Leo Tolstoy, and the works of Balzac, Proust, Turgenev, Dickens, and Eliot, where the “old wander in and out”—for example, the “tender portrait” of Wemmick’s Aged Parent, in “Great Expectations.”

In 2011, Bailey published the novel “Chapman’s Odyssey,” in which an elderly male protagonist, lying ill in the hospital, is visited by people real and imagined: lovers, dead parents, characters from literature. It was inspired by Bailey’s own extended hospital stays, which he says he has come to enjoy “in a perverse way” because of the interesting people he meets there, “like the man who covers his breakfast cereal with anchovy essence.” Though the novel is about old age, he says he feels “younger for having written it.” He helped me pinpoint where I had perhaps gone wrong in my own imaginative attempt when he said, “I never, never thought I was tackling the ‘problem’ of old age. It was never a fictional problem for me. It was just another aspect of being alive, and human.”

The second writer who shared her thoughts with me is Fleur Adcock. If poetry, as Auden wrote, “might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings,” then the medium seems particularly suited to capturing the ambivalence of the old toward old age. The New Zealand-born British poet Adcock published her first collection when she was thirty, and she is now eighty-one. Like Lively, she says that old age began for her at the age of seventy, when she fell seriously ill for a period, though she says “a more honest but less tidy answer might be that it has been a very gradual process, with old age retreating and advancing unpredictably over the years.” She does remember feeling peculiar on realizing that, in her mid-seventies, she had outlived Yeats, whom she thought of as “that iconic ‘old poet,’ ” and who died at the age of seventy-three.

In her recent collection “Glass Wings” (2013), the picture she paints of old age is utterly eye-opening. Her elderly speakers are comfortable with technology but use it in ways particular to their needs. In “Match Girl,” the speaker asks, of her little sister,

But how can someone younger than me have osteoporosis, and sit googling up a substance that might help it, or give her phossy jaw?

In “Alumnae Notes,” the speaker laments old school friends who have died or been lost to dementia, but then reasserts her connection to the present:

The class photos fade. But Marie and I, face to face on Skype in full colour and still far too animated to die, can see we’ve not yet turned to sepia.

In “Mrs Baldwin,” the speaker describes the “muffled pang” of envy that clutches her whenever she hears that someone has been given a diagnosis of cancer. In “Having Sex with the Dead,” the speaker remembers past lovers: “The looks on their dead faces, as they plunge / into you, your hand circling a column / of one-time flesh and pulsing blood that now / has long been ash and dispersed chemicals.”

Adcock has known Jenny Joseph, the author of “Warning,” for many years, and says that Joseph is “fed up” with her iconic poem, written so long ago, when she was a young woman imagining old age (“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple / With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,” the poem begins). Joseph is now in her mid-eighties, and still publishing poetry. A recent poem by her, “A Patient Old Cripple,” makes a beautiful counterpoint to the earlier, blustering tone of “Warning” with its final lines: “I curse the world that blunders into me, and hurts / But know / Its bad fit is the best that we can do.”

The third writer I spoke to is the eighty-two-year-old Penelope Lively, who published her first book when she was thirty-seven, and who also often imagined elderly characters in her fiction when she was younger (in her novel “Moon Tiger,” for example, which won the 1989 Booker Prize). Her most recent novel, “How it All Began” (2011), revolves around an elderly female protagonist whose broken hip precipitates a series of random but significant collisions in the lives of others. She’s currently working on a set of short stories, many with elderly protagonists.

Lively has also chosen to share her view from old age in a memoir, “Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time,” from 2013. This is not a traditional memoir but a meditation on old age and memory. She takes pride in her right to speak of these things. “One of the few advantages of age,” she writes, “is that you can report on it with a certain authority; you are a native now, and know what goes on here.” She also highlights the importance of the mission: “Our experience is one unknown to most of humanity, over time. We are the pioneers.” She likes the anonymity that old age has given her; it leaves her “free to do what a novelist does anyway, listen and watch, but with the added spice of feeling a little as though I am some observant time-traveller.”

She is among the first true anthropologists of old age, both participant and observer. Many of her attitudes seem almost unimaginable to the young: for example, she’s not envious of us, she is still as curious as she always was, she doesn’t miss travel or holidays, she has become used to physical pain; she still has “needs and greeds” (muesli with sheep’s-milk yogurt, the daily fix of reading), but her more “acquisitive” lusts have faded. Most surprisingly, she insists that old age is not a “pallid sort of place,” that she is still capable of “an almost luxurious appreciation of the world.”

It sounds to me both wonderful and terrible, a permanent contradiction in terms, but perhaps this ambiguity is why, in her view, “memorable and effective writing about old age is rare … a danger zone for many novelists.” She singles out Kingsley Amis’s “Ending Up” for avoiding stereotypes of old age, by being “funny with a bleak undertone,” and the trilogy that Jane Gardam started writing in her mid-seventies and recently completed in her mid-eighties (“Old Filth,” “The Man in the Wooden Hat,” and “Last Friends”).

Lively is hopeful about any new interest in and awareness of old age, and thinks that, in part, the reason younger people find old age “more interesting than daunting” is because her demographic is “much more attuned to the times than … the old were in the past. We have mutated, and may have one toe still in 1950 but have an outlook very much of 2015.” The gap between generations is “closing up” in a way it wasn’t when she was young, she says. But when I asked her about the ethical responsibility younger authors have to depict old age realistically, she responded, “As a writer, you have to think—am I capable of this quantum leap of the imagination? If the answer is dubious—then don’t do it. Stereotyping is a kind of fictional abuse.”

As for what she thinks she got wrong when she was creating elderly characters as a younger writer, she says she wasn’t quite able, back then, to imagine the less dramatic physical aspects of being old: the constant pain from various forms of arthritis, the slow impairment of sight and hearing, and a “kind of instability,” a loss of balance “that would be unnerving if it came on suddenly, but, because it is gradual, you adapt.” With the elderly protagonist Claudia, in “Moon Tiger” (written when Lively was in her early fifties), she says, “I ducked the problem … by making her a mind rather than a body—she is dying in hospital, but not much is made of that, what you know of her are her thoughts and her memories.” What she believes she got right, however, is that Claudia’s mindset in old age is much the same as when she was young; this, she says, has been true to her own experience of getting older.

Why does literature about old age matter? A better question, perhaps, is one posed by John Halliday, the editor of the old-age-themed poetry anthology “Don’t Bring Me No Rocking Chair” (the title is taken from a Maya Angelou poem): “Who is calling the shots when it comes to aging?” For Halliday, it is the power of poetry to offer us a “fresh language” of old age that is so important. Lynne Segal agrees. Literature, she says, has the potential to give us texts in which “the experiences of the old unfold and collapse back, like concertinas, into narratives that are rarely reducible to age itself.” After all, as Sarah Falcus writes, “Literature does not … simply mirror or reflect a social world, but, instead, is part of and complicit in shaping that social world.”

For my part, I’m not sure I will return to my novel. It now strikes me as an exercise in speculative showing off: look at me, so young and hard at work imagining old age! I think I prefer to watch and learn as this “coming of old age” literature continues to explode in scope and scale, and listen closely to artists who, in their advanced years, “have the confidence to speak simply,” as Julian Barnes says. Forget the bildungsroman. We are on the cusp of the age of the reifungsroman—the literary scholar Barbara Frey Waxman’s term for the “novel of ripening.”

Everywhere I look now, I seem to stumble upon new writing about old age by those who are themselves old, personal and creative accounts of the many subcultures and subjectivities of old age, and I feel increasingly ashamed of my earlier ignorance of this blossoming body of work. My to-read list now includes stories by the ninety-six-year-old Emyr Humphreys; late work by Doris Lessing, Chinua Achebe, and Seamus Heaney; poetry by Elaine Feinstein, Dannie Abse, Maureen Duffy, and Ruth Fainlight; a new novel by the seventy-three-year-old Erica Jong, “Fear of Dying”; fiction by William Trevor, David Lodge, Kent Haruf, Toni Morrison, and Kenzaburo Oe; memoirs by Vivian Gornick, Roger Angell, and Diana Athill. It’s an exciting time, to have a brand-new feature of human experience—living longer—described by people as they live it, by people who have learned with age, as the late poet Adrienne Rich said, the year she turned eighty, to balance “dread and beauty.”

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, what’s college life really like.

As a junior hearing a lot about the 'college experience', I'm starting to wonder what university life is actually like. Is it just studying and parties or is there more to it? How do you balance social life with academic responsibilities, and what do you wish you'd known before heading to college? Honestly, any perspective on this would help me set some realistic expectations!

Understanding the college experience is actually quite multifaceted—it extends well beyond the clichés of studying and socializing. You'll likely find that time management is key to balancing academic and social commitments. You'll likely benefit from creating a structured schedule that allocates time for classes, studying, extracurriculars, and relaxation.

Also, don't underestimate the need for personal time; it’s crucial for mental health. In college, you’ll also have opportunities to explore new interests, join various clubs, and even partake in research or work-study programs.

What I wish more incoming freshmen knew about is the importance of seeking help when needed, whether it’s academic support or mental health services. Colleges often have abundant resources such as tutoring centers and counseling services. Lastly, keep in mind that every student's experience is unique, and what works for one may not work for another. Be open to adjusting as you go.

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Guest Essay

Saying Goodbye to My Brilliant Friend, the Poetry Critic Helen Vendler

By Roger Rosenblatt

The author, most recently, of “Cataract Blues: Running the Keyboard.”

One makes so few new friends in older age — I mean, real friends, the ones you bond with and hold dear, as if you’d known one another since childhood.

Old age often prevents, or at least tempers, such discoveries. The joy of suddenly finding someone of compatible tastes, politics, intellectual interests and sense of humor can be shadowed, if tacitly, by the inevitable prospect of loss.

I became friends with Helen Vendler — the legendary poetry critic who died last week — six years ago, after she came to a talk I gave at Harvard about my 1965-66 Fulbright year in Ireland. Our friendship was close at the outset and was fortified and deepened by many letters between us, by our writing.

Some critics gain notice by something new they discover in the literature they examine. Helen became the most important critic of the age by dealing with something old and basic — the fact that great poetry was, well, lovable. Her vast knowledge of it was not like anyone else’s, and she embraced the poets she admired with informed exuberance.

The evening we met, Helen and I huddled together for an hour, maybe two, speaking of the great Celtic scholar John Kelleher, under whom we had both studied; of Irish poetry; and of our families. Helen was born to cruelly restrictive Irish Catholic parents who would not think of her going to anything but a Catholic college. When Helen rebelled against them, she was effectively tossed out and never allowed to return home.

She told me all this at our very first meeting. And I told her the sorrows of my own life — the untimely death of my daughter, Amy, and the seven-plus years my wife, Ginny, and I spent helping to rear her three children. And I told Helen unhappy things about my own upbringing. The loneliness. I think we both sensed that we had found someone we could trust with our lives.

I never asked Helen why she had come to my talk in the first place, though I had recognized her immediately. After spending a life with English and American poetry — especially the poetry of Wallace Stevens — how could I not? The alert tilt of her head, the two parenthetical lines around the mouth that always seemed on the verge of saying something meaningful and the sad-kind-wise eyes of the most significant literary figure since Edmund Wilson.

And unlike Wilson, Helen was never compelled to show off. She knew as much about American writing as Wilson, and, I believe, loved it more.

It was that, even more than the breadth and depth of her learning, that set her apart. She was a poet who didn’t write poetry, but felt it like a poet, and thus knew the art form to the core of her being. Her method of “close reading,” studying a poem intently word by word, was her way of writing it in reverse.

Weeks before Helen’s death and what would have been her 91st birthday, we exchanged letters. I had sent her an essay I’d just written on the beauty of wonder, stemming from the wonder so many people felt upon viewing the total solar eclipse earlier this month. I often sent Helen things I wrote. Some she liked less than others, and she was never shy to say so. She liked the essay on wonder, though she said she was never a wonderer herself, but a “hopeless pragmatist,” not subject to miracles, except upon two occasions. One was the birth of her son, David, whom she mentioned in letters often. She loved David deeply, and both were happy when she moved from epic Cambridge to lyrical Laguna Niguel, Calif., to be near him, as she grew infirm.

Her second miracle, coincidentally, occurred when Seamus Heaney drove her to see a solar eclipse at Tintern Abbey. There, among the Welsh ruins, Helen had an astonishing experience, one that she described to me in a way that seemed almost to evoke Wordsworth:

I had of course read descriptions of the phenomena of a total eclipse, but no words could equal the total-body/total landscape effect; the ceasing of bird song; the inexorability of the dimming to a crescent and then to a corona; the total silence; the gradual salience of the stars; the iciness of the silhouette of the towers; the looming terror of the steely eclipse of all of nature. Now that quelled utterly any purely “scientific” interest. One became pure animal, only animal, no “thought-process” being even conceivable.

One who claims not to know wonders shows herself to be one.

She was so intent on the beauty of the poets she understood so deeply, she never could see why others found her appreciations remarkable. Once, when I sent her a note complimenting her on a wonderfully original observation she’d made in a recent article, she wrote: “So kind of you to encourage me. I always feel that everything I say would be obvious to anyone who can read, so am always amazed when someone praises something.”

Only an innocent of the highest order would say such a beautiful, preposterous thing. When recently the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her the Gold Medal for Belle Lettres and Criticism, Helen was shocked.

“You could have floored me when I got the call,” she wrote to me, adding: “Perhaps I was chosen by the committee because of my advanced age; if so, I can’t complain. The quote that came to mind was Lowell’s ‘My head grizzled with the years’ gold garbage.’”

She was always doing that — attaching a quotation from poetry to a thought or experience of her own, as if she occupied the same room as all the great poets, living with them as closely as loved ones in a tenement.

Shelley called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I never fully got that famous line. But if the legislators’ laws apply to feeling and conduct, I think he was onto something. If one reads poetry — ancient and modern — as deeply as Helen did, and stays with it, and lets it roll around in one’s head, the effect is transporting. You find yourself in a better realm of feeling and language. And nothing of the noisier outer world — not Donald Trump, not Taylor Swift — can get to you.

In our last exchange of letters, Helen told me about the death she was arranging for herself. I was brokenhearted to realize that I was losing someone who had given me and countless others so much thought and joy. Her last words to me were telling, though, and settled the matter as only practical, spiritual Helen could:

I feel not a whit sad at the fact of death, but massively sad at leaving friends behind, among whom you count dearly. I have always known what my true feelings are by whatever line of poetry rises unbidden to my mind on any occasion; to my genuine happiness, this time was a line from Herbert’s “Evensong,” in which God (always in Herbert, more like Jesus than Jehovah), says to the poet, “Henceforth repose; your work is done.”

She closed her letter as I closed my response. “Love and farewell.”

Roger Rosenblatt is the author, most recently, of “Cataract Blues: Running the Keyboard.”

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