Annie Dillard on How to Live

Suppose we answer the most important question of existence in the affirmative. There is then only one question remaining: How shall we live this life?

Despite all the technologies of thought and feeling we have invented to divine an answer — philosophy and poetry, scripture and self-help — life stares mutely back at us, immense and indifferent, having abled us with opposable thumbs and handicapped us with a consciousness capable of self-reference that renders us dissatisfied with the banality o...