What Gives Your Life Meaning?
The best way to overcome life’s challenges.
French philosopher Michel de Montaigne spoke truth when he quipped that the utility of living isn’t a matter of the length of time, but instead its use.
“The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time. A man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.” — Michel de Montaigne
A prolific writer, de Montaigne invented a new form of writing: the essay. From the French word “essayer” or “to try”, the genre reflects his way of discovering the world. A man of many ideas, this literary form sprang out of his attempts to put his thoughts down into writing.
The Renaissance thinker would spend the bulk of the last 20 years of his life composing pieces on all kinds of subjects, and then coming back to revise them at later periods. This iterative process captured well the evolution of his ideas and knowledge on the topics he was writing about.
While Montaigne discussed a vast variety of things in his works, one overall theme stood out. How to live. In the second book of his “Essays”, he shared that it was the act of living itself that defined his being.
