I have worked in radio and television up to the present, and I have been making online audio programs for nearly twenty years. Over those years, I have naturally received many questions from listeners. They can be grouped broadly into three categories.

The first is the broadest and most varied, usually concerning subjects I often discuss, such as books and social affairs. We can set those aside for now.

The second concerns methods of thinking: how to judge right and wrong, for example, or how to reason about an issue more rationally. I no longer need to answer such questions. Whenever someone asks, I simply urge them to listen to Professor Xu Yingjin’s Practical Philosophy on the Vistopia app. That program will settle it. There is no need to ask me about methods of thought; I cannot explain them as well as Professor Xu, nor do I possess his learning. The third category is harder still: the so-called perplexities of life. They come in every form—choosing a field of study, marriage, family, the conflict between ideals and reality. Then there are life’s ultimate questions: why are we alive, and what meaning does my life have?

Those questions generate even greater confusion. I always say I am no life coach because I am especially afraid of answering them. Why? If you have a moment, let me share a little of my own experience.

From fifth or sixth grade onward, I felt drawn to philosophy. I studied with the goal of entering a university philosophy department and eventually did just that. Many years after graduation, I still have not given up my love for philosophy.

Why did I originally want to study it? Like most people who enjoy philosophy and later study it formally, I was troubled by life’s ultimate question: what is the meaning of being alive? That question led me into philosophy, to read it and attempt some philosophical thinking. Yet after decades I found that although I had read a vast amount of theory, mastered some terminology, and even once possessed intellectual weapons I considered formidable—weighing words with others and arguing without conceding ground—I had lost sight of my original purpose.

Looking back, I realized not merely that I had forgotten why I wanted to study philosophy, but that this happened while I was still a student. If you study philosophy at university and constantly discuss philosophies of life, philosophy’s meaning for life, or practical answers to life’s perplexities, people in the discipline may look down on you. The moment you mention life, fellow philosophers may decide that you do not understand the field, are not a professional, and should go peddle inspirational platitudes rather than claim to practice philosophy.

What do real philosophers do? They write the papers found in specialist journals, full of forbidding terms, complex arguments, and much that is hard to understand—yet possibly unrelated to our actual perplexities. Why has this happened? It cannot be explained quickly. In any case, only in my late thirties did I suddenly look back and realize that I could not answer the very question that first drove me to read and think about philosophy. I was powerless before it.

How could so much philosophy leave me powerless? One reason is what I just described. Another is that philosophy has never had a recognized branch called “philosophy of life,” and few great philosophers have devoted themselves specifically to theoretical judgments about life’s problems. Such philosophy is scattered through the writings of thinkers in different eras, making it especially difficult to assemble.

Fortunately, Professor Xu Yingjin has returned, this time with a full one-hundred-episode series on the philosophy of life. Listeners and readers who know the field will understand the enormous labor involved: systematically gathering ideas normally dispersed across many works and shaping them into a philosophy of life that can offer guidance and reference. It is an extraordinary and difficult undertaking, but Professor Xu has accomplished it in his usual engaging, unhurried style.

If, like me, you remain perplexed by life—even at fifty—I strongly recommend Professor Xu Yingjin’s program. I hope it will not necessarily hand you an answer, but will at least offer directions, points of reference, and what Professor Xu calls tools.