What Is the Value of a Life Well Lived?

"As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery..."
             -From Ithaka by C P Cavafy

I love my job… I really do. To be a part, daily, of several kooky microcosms filled with a variety of 14-18-year-olds exploring either the production or reception of language that reflects the human condition is nothing short of magical. These explorations are beautiful in their unpredictability – there’s no telling in which way a class will respond to a particular text or how they will write on a particular prompt. Ergo, there is a permanent sense of discovery within learning activities and realizations as well as recalibrations that help one grow as a teacher... and a human being. Whether a concerning degree of hair loss is a side-effect is still being determined!!

 There are days when your students will leave you scratching your head and wondering what this generation will come to – if the media swamp they seem addicted to has completely compromised their abilities to stay present with something - and there are days that prove your adult (prone to dramatically exaggerate the ills of the current age) self wrong. You are left speechless – speechless with the potential that these adolescents give one a glimpse of.

I had one of those days recently. While grading the final International Baccalaureate (IB) mock exam responses from my literature group, I was suffused with all a Disney-like stupor of happiness. My students’ responses to the poem Ithaka by C P Cavafy were insightful, lucid, and poetic. Besides the fact that there was an impressive display of literary analysis, their evaluative remarks and nuanced interpretations made me feel like I was reading a series of very inspiring quotes – and showed me what fine and thoughtful souls these laconic teenagers harbored. Their writing reflected worldviews that were positive and encouraging and, apart from their ridiculously impressive resumes, if this was what they were going out into the world with, I am very pleased. I see hope in these young ones – lots of it!

Here they are – excerpts from various student responses – shared in the hope that you find in them the same spark of insight, empathy, and possibility that left me inspired.

What is the value of a life well lived?

• Life: that ever-changing journey that each human must navigate for whatever time is available to them, is often brought from the chaos of reality into an ordered celebration through art.
• The compelling idea of exploring the multitude of human emotions through the visceral connotations of the word “sensual.”
• The value of a successful quest is truly in the journey that it spurred.
• The value of living life for oneself rather than simply in the context of a greater purpose.
• The poet desires for the reader to not merely have the opportunities of pleasurable “summer mornings” but to actively and continually engage with them to make their journey through life worthwhile.
• Cavafy suggests that the reader’s journey through life is what will finally bring them to the place they belong – home is the destination, not the starting point.
• People will decide for themselves what obstacles they are to encounter on their journey. They will face that which they or their ‘soul’ brings with them.
• When the poet wishes that the reader’s “road” shall be “a long one,” he does not intend it to be a curse… but rather a blessing that they may take their time to partake of life’s small pleasures and the general splendor of the world.
• Life must be treated like a grand journey and through its traversal the reader is finally ready to arrive “wealthy with all [they’ve] gained along the way” – a metaphorical wealth not merely referring to material gain but also to the wealth of experiences that offer spiritual maturity.
• Cavafy emphasizes that “as long as” we keep our “spirits high” and remain “excited,” all setbacks will be overcome or sidestepped.
• The poet indicates that all problems are representative of the internal – any monsters that are brought have been constructed within the “soul.”
• Cavafy emphasizes the potential for intellectual fulfillment, encouraging us to “learn” and “go on learning.”
• The poet reveals that, often, the nature of our goal does not change but we do and hopes that we will understand that these goals and destinations, held so dear as to compel us to cross stormy seas, pale in comparison to the actual journey.
• Perhaps it is better to prefer ship to shore, for we can always embark on a new voyage and begin our next journey.