What is a life well lived?
Before continuing, you might take a moment and journal about this prompt:
What does it mean to live a good life?
Some will tell me the question is too hard. Philosophers, religious scholars, and others have been trying to define a well lived life for thousands of years. Aristotle called it flourishing. Viktor Frankl called it meaning. Scripture speaks of love, mercy, and humility.
We could study philosophy for years trying to figure it out.
But let me ask you something smaller.
What is a day well lived?
In many ways, these are the same question. Our lives are a culmination of days—a string of ordinary Tuesdays.
Yet the questions feel different.
We’re okay with trading a day of happiness or a day of work for the hope of something better. We trade five work days for the two days of weekend. We bring our highest energy to work and show up at home tired and just ready to chill and watch TV. We trade our healthiest years and the time with our kids for the hope of a fruitful retirement.
All of these are necessary and fruitful endeavors…assuming they correspond to our personal definition of a life well lived.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard
How can we ensure the days add up to the lives we want to live?
The Productivity Trap
When I ask women what a life well lived looks like, I hear these:
- Spending time with family
- Devoting time to religion
- Building deep relationships
- Sharing adventures with family
- Contributing meaningfully in some way to society
- Living each day to its fullest
- Showing kindness to others
When I ask what a day well lived looks like, I notice a shift in the answers:
- Getting things from the to-do list crossed off
- Finishing a project
- Cleaning the house
- Being productive
Some of these overlap. A productive day at work can align beautifully with meaningful contribution, assuming work is, indeed, part of the legacy we’re building. For some women, it absolutely is. But for others, it isn’t.
I have colleagues at work who spend countless overtime hours on evenings and weekends dedicated to work, but their life goal is to write a book or raise their kids well or participate meaningfully in some other way. And still, their overtime hours rarely move them toward those dreams.
We say we want family to matter. But do we put these on the to-do list:
- Play with kids
- Be present making dinner together
- Make a memory
- Sit and listen to our children
We schedule meetings. We need to schedule wonder.
We put deadlines on the calendar. We need to put delight on the calendar.
“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”
Henry David Thoreau
For working mothers, busyness is not hypothetical. It is constant. It is layered. It is relentless. And exhaustion makes it incredibly easy to drift from intentional living into reactive surviving.
When Days Become Years
Once we have kids, time shifts.
The days feel long, but the years move far too quickly.
It becomes frighteningly easy to watch evenings blur into months. To look up and realize we’ve spent entire seasons at the end of our ropes—short-tempered, distracted, scrolling, surviving. Telling ourselves that if we could just get through this period, we’ll be okay after.
Of course there will be hard days. That is not failure; that is humanity.
But how many evenings can we be checked out before that feeling becomes the month?
How many months before it becomes the year?
How many years before it becomes the story of our motherhood?
James Clear writes, “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
I would add: every evening is a vote for the kind of mother, partner, and woman you are becoming.
If you feel stuck in one of these ruts—so common among working mothers—it may be time to return to the two questions:
What is a life well lived?
What is a day well lived?
And then to ask a harder one:
Does my calendar reflect my answer?
Philosophy in the Kitchen
Aristotle believed a flourishing life is built through repeated habits of virtue. Not grand gestures—habits. Courage in small decisions. Patience in ordinary moments. Justice in everyday interactions.
That means flourishing is not built in retirement. It is built at 6:15 p.m. when you are tired and someone spills milk.
Viktor Frankl, who survived unimaginable suffering during the Holocaust, wrote, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
Working motherhood can feel overwhelming not simply because it is full—but because it sometimes feels disconnected from meaning. We do so much, yet we do not always pause to connect our doing to who we are becoming.
The goal is not to do less necessarily (though it may be, depending on the circumstances). It is to live more deliberately inside what we are already doing.
To cook dinner and choose to see it as nourishing loved ones.
To answer emails and see the contribution work provides.
To put the phone down for fifteen minutes and choose presence over productivity.
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
Viktor Frankl
The View from the End
Many years from now, you will be in a different place.
The kids will be grown.
The house will be quieter.
You will have more time.
If you could step into that future self for just a moment and look back at today, what would she gently ask you to change? What would she demand you change?
Would she tell you to worry less?
To laugh more?
To release the spotless house?
To kneel down and enter the Lego world more often?
Someday, you will face the final reality of your life. Not in a morbid way—but in a clarifying way. What will you regret? What will you wish you’d chosen to do today?
This is not a call to live in anxiety about the future. It’s also not a call to make rash decisions in the name of living for today. It is an invitation to let the end clarify the now.
Bridging the Gap
So how do we close the gap between the life we say we want and the days we are actually living?
We begin by putting our answers into ink. And then we step into our lives.
Exercise
1. Journal the big questions.
What is a well-lived life—for you?
What is a well-lived day?
Be specific. Not abstract virtues alone, but lived experiences.
2. Reverse engineer your dreams.
If you want deep relationships, what daily behaviors cultivate them?
If you want meaningful contribution, what small step today moves you toward it?
3. Rewrite your to-do list.
Add verbs of being, not only doing:
- Be present
- Be patient
- Be playful
- Be attentive
Change “go to the park” to “play at the park.”
Change “make dinner” to “invite the kids to cook.”
Change “watch a movie” to “laugh together.”
Productivity measures output. Presence measures investment.
4. Have courageous conversations.
Talk with your spouse or close friends about the energy and emphasis of your time together. Align your calendars with your shared values. Protect what matters before it gets crowded out.
Living Now
Mary Oliver asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
For working mothers, the answer may not be wild in the world’s eyes. It may look like reading one more story, building something meaningful at work, praying in the quiet before dawn, or choosing patience when irritation would be easier.
A life well lived is not built someday.
It is built today.
And tomorrow.
And next Tuesday.
Live your life now—not perfectly, but intentionally.
Because how you spend this day is how you are spending your life.