Figuring out what matters most

What do you want to do? Spend more time with the grandchildren, continue paid work, or fulfill dreams of travel, volunteering, or hobbies? For some, there’s no choice involved; circumstances dictate what they do. For some, the answer is simply obvious. But many who have the luxury of choice are torn: yes, more time with the grandchildren and yes, more time working or traveling (etc.), but the goals conflict. There’s not a single, right answer for these folks. But there probably is an answer that is best for each individual. Figuring out that answer can be tricky, though, because it requires somehow getting those goals—and the values that underlie the goals—into better alignment. That and figuring out what your goals and values are.*

Because being caught up in goal/value conflicts can be very stressful, it’s worth taking time to resolve the dilemmas. One resource for doing this is the book What Do You Want Out of Life? A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters. Written by University of Minnesota professor Valerie Tiberius, it details ways to recognize, untangle, repair, or reframe value conflicts. Even if you are settled—lucky you!—the book might give you helpful insights to pass along to, say, adult children working through work-life balance concerns, or grandchildren deciding how to spend their time.

What do you want?

The book is not about what goals/values a person ought to have, but about figuring out the ones they do have—and, if necessary, revising them or their interpretation of them to reduce conflicts among them. The perspective is relativist: Each person needs to choose their goals/values. But relativist within bounds: Tiberius is also a naturalist. Simply because we’re biologically human, she says, the great majority of us naturally home in on goals/values like treating other people kindly, protecting our health, learning skills, etc., because these help us participate in family and society and therefore help make us happy. 

So let’s say you’ve been stressed for a while because you want to help your adult kids with the grandkids and you want to spend the winter with your friend in another state. For this (or whatever goal/value conflict you have) Tiberius suggests five methods for the often-tricky process of identifying your goals/values. It’s important to adopt several of the methods, because you’ll get different information from each. The Introspection method helps you recognize your goals/values by attending to how you feel. When do you feel flow, tranquility, or joy—tell-tale signs of highly valuing an activity? Is it when playing with the grandkids, or when you’re laughing with your friend? Or maybe when doing something else entirely? On the flip side, when do you experience “negative mystery moods,” boredom, or burnout? These feelings may indicate that you’re not fulfilling key goals/values. The lab rat method helps you identify goals/values by observing what you do, as if from the outside. Given a choice, do you spend an afternoon with the grandkids or with your friends? Noticing what activities you gravitate toward, given a choice, gives a good clue to your goals/values. The other methods—guided reflection, learning from others, and exploration help expand your value options beyond what has you stuck, aided by (respectively) your imagination, hearing from trusted others about yourself, and finding out what other people—perhaps especially those not in your usual circles—value and do.**

Reconciling conflicting goals/values 

Tiberius follows up by offering concrete suggestions for reducing conflicts among your goals/values once you’ve identified them. 

• Prioritize or adjust means to ends. To decide between grandchildren and friend, perhaps there is a crucial juncture in one or the other’s life that helps you prioritize: Maybe there’s a gap in daycare, or your friend is ill. You don’t give up one goal/value, but you attend to one before the other. Alternatively, you could adjust means to ends by, for example, asking the friend to come stay with you, rather than vice-versa, so you could still also help out with the grandchildren. 

• Give up one of the conflicting goals/values. One of Tiberius’ examples is to give up valuing wealth, fame, or status to make room for more satisfying values. Often a relevant example, and easier to do at 70 than at 30! But giving up valuing your friend or your grandchildren? Probably not the strategy you’ll choose. 

• Reinterpret goals/values. Here you can dig a little more and get creative. For example, right now, what’s important about time with the grandchildren? Do their parents need your help? Or is it relationship with the grandchild that’s important? If the parents need help, is there another way to provide it? If relationship, could you maintain remotely with calls or (gasp) snail mail while you step away for a bit? Similarly, what’s important, right now, about time with your friend? 

• Make peace with what you can’t change. Maybe you can’t travel. Maybe you just don’t have it in you to make another peanut butter sandwich. At some point, Tiberius says, we have to accept that we are imperfect—we simply can’t or won’t achieve some goal or realize some value we hold. “One option,” she continues, “is to embrace this [imperfect] aspect of yourself without really endorsing it, as you might do with a friend’s flaws” (Chapter 6): that is, you can give yourself a hug even while recognizing that there’s part of you that you wish were different.

The goal/value-detection and conflict-reduction processes Tiberius suggests have helped me ask questions and consider alternatives about my personal dilemmas that I haven’t in the past. For example, reinterpreting and making peace are helping me resolve my long-time angst over not doing more hands-on volunteer work outside the family: Maybe donations do count! And maybe, as undesirable as this is, maybe I just never will get comfortable with people I don’t know. 

Still, all the “maybes” and interpretations I came up with through the processes leave me adrift. Plus I worry that “making peace” and “reinterpreting” are excuses for being a slacker. I suspect many readers who use Tiberius’ processes to tackle their own goal/value conflicts will have a similar experiences and doubts, simply because relativism, by its nature, leaves decisions up to the individual. And that’s hard because with our one life, we have only so much time to learn and experiment to see what works best for ourselves and others. 

So I find myself less relativist than Tiberius.*** I think I increase my chances for success by choosing a core value that can help me interpret and course-correct when other, less central, values or goals conflict. For me, caring (or love, if you prefer) is that value. I also pay attention to people who live caring lives, so that I can draw on others’ experiences over time and various situations. With a central value chosen, I have a stake in the ground to help steady and guide me. Figuring out that goal/value is, for me, the key to any lasting internal peace.

* In Tiberius’s framing, goals are more temporary and less fundamental than values. Maybe I have a goal of getting to choir on time, but I value punctuality. Maybe I value punctuality a little, but I deeply value dependability. But conflicting goals can create stress and anxiety just as conflicting values do, and there’s a lot of gray area between values and goals, so for the purposes here there’s no point in getting persnickety about the difference.

**I’ve left out some important complications. For one thing, you may actively suppress your own goals/values, as when you do value your own health, but you ignore it to care for someone else’s. Or you may not realize how much you value some constant in your life until you lose it—the “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” phenomenon (Chapter 3). Or perhaps you imbibed values in youth that turn out to be injurious to you or to others. Or you value self-harming substances or activities. These are all difficult and urgent situations that I don’t have space to cover.

***Tiberius would agree that you may have a central value. I’m less relativist because I think I (we!) need one. FYI, she also suggests that people should adopt some value that outlasts individual people, because of our own and others’ vulnerability. Examples include participating in or contributing to art, medicine, or religion. I agree.