Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I don't want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to understand how people answered that question and the question each of you posed in your papers--how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life.

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