In a world where we are inundated with options, it feels as though everything rides on making the right choice. Enter decision paralysis.

LONG From TikTok influencers to productivity bros, there’s no shortage of people today doling out lifehacks. But there’s a difference between generalised advice from online gurus and the specific guidance we want for our lives – especially when we’re faced with weighty decisions, like what to do with our lives, where to live, how to push through a difficult time.

Alan Noble, an Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and the author of To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, has talked to many young people navigating such questions, and understands, firsthand, the anxiety of feeling adrift in a sea of options while also feeling pressured to make the right decision.

In this interview with Life & Faith, Alan speaks into the existential overwhelm and choice paralysis people feel, what T.S. Eliot’s image of ‘a heap of broken images’ has in common with the scattered life advice on offer today, and what it would mean to revisit older notions of ‘virtue’ and ‘character’ to help us make sense of how we should live.

We also speak with Sofia, Brodie, Jordan, and Ana. Each tells us about a significant life decision, or challenging circumstance, they’ve faced lately, and what they’ve learnt from the experience. Sofia, 22, and Brodie, 21, have transitioned from university study to the workplace. Jordan, 25, tells us about navigating a career setback. And Ana, 43, tells us how life took an unexpected turn when she became a newlywed at 40, and fell pregnant last year.

Through their stories, we experience not only the difficulty of choosing well but grappling with uncertainty since, as Alan writes in To Live Well, ‘you can’t wait for certainty before you act’. Along the way, the stories of Ana, Jordan, Brodie, and Sofia each have something to teach us about being courageous – with ‘courage’ or ‘fortitude’ being one of the virtues.

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Alan Noble’s To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times

His other books On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living

You can sign up for his Substack newsletter here

We think we’re fully human when we’re independent of other people. We couldn’t be more wrong, says Leah Libresco Sargeant.

Is dependence taboo?

We may be happy to lend a hand to others, but we probably squirm at the idea of asking for help ourselves. In a world that prizes autonomy and independence, it feels almost shameful to be dependent.

Which is partly why Leah Libresco Sargeant got pushback from her publisher about putting the ‘d’ word – dependence – in the title of her book The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. (Actually, as she tells Life & Faith, every word in that title proved controversial).

The word ‘dependence’ was especially tricky, says Sargeant, because we resist the idea of someone ‘taking from someone else’ without being able to pay them back.

But this is the very idea Sargeant, a Catholic thinker and author, is trying to defend: ‘There are periods of our lives where we receive from others and where we can’t pay back, and that’s a normal period of a human life’.

Sargeant points out that when we operate with a faulty anthropology – a false picture of the human – then the world only works for those who conform to that false image. If we believe that a full human life is an independent one, we’ll stigmatise dependence.

But this is untrue, since every human begins life completely dependent on others. It also leaves out vast swathes of people – including women who, for a variety of reasons, are more exposed to the need of others. Which is partly why our conversation begins with the striking claim Sargeant makes on the first page of her book: ‘The world is the wrong shape for women’.

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The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto

Leah Libresco Sargeant’s Other Feminisms Substack newsletter

Interview featuring Leah Libresco Sargeant in conversation with Helen Andrews on Ross Douthat’s podcast Interesting Times

Changing careers can be tough. Is it worth the risk?

Shifting careers into something completely new, especially if you have been doing a job for a long time, can be a daunting prospect. But it can also be immensely rewarding. In this episode of Life & Faith we speak to three people who made radical changes in their careers and lived to tell the tale!

A hairdresser trains to be a nurse. A singer shifts to art teaching. A customs agent becomes a paramedic.

What did these changes involve? What was the motivation? Was it all worth the pain? And where do we find the deepest satisfaction in our work?