Some years ago, I was asked by a student who apparently believed that I had some sort of ultimate insight into what life means, to say what I believed to be the secret to living.  What a question!  It is a question, I daresay, no one should think he or she can ever fully answer.
     But I tried.  First, I mentioned the importance of gratitude.  Every day we should remember that everything we have, even life itself, is a gift:  we did nothing to earn our way into being alive.  We did nothing to be born with the genes we possess.  We did nothing to merit where or how we were born.  It's all a gift, a gift of, ultimately, God, but a gift which he has mediated through the fractured workings of this world.  Moreover, whatever we have achieved in this life, however one measures achievement, yes, we have done so through our efforts, but these were efforts enabled, big picture, by that with which we were born, things with which we had nothing to do.
     Second, I mentioned humility.  When we exercise humility, we are telling ourselves, and the world, that, again, we did not come into this life on our own power or volition.  Although we may be gifted and talented, we did nothing to merit such:  we are ultimately creatures who, as Genesis puts it, came from dust and, one day, will return to dust.  Sure, we can be proud of what we may have done, but we do well to remember that, in the end, we are but one more set of human beings, a few human beings among billions and billions of others, who have strode across this planet:  are we really that special?
     In God's eyes, we of course are.  But we remain human, contingent, dependent, needy.  Perhaps we are strong now, but one day we will not be.  We are victims of our mortality.  Humility is recognizing who we most are:  loved greatly, but enormously fragile.
     We are only ourselves.