HOW A GOOD LIFE WORKS?
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH TO HAVE A GOOD LIFE?
Over the years, we’ve met many people who are in the same place that somehow who seems to be our mirror as what happens to them as it happens to us which basically we can relate it through the start of the film in a movie in some circumstances. They’ve lost their smiles. There’s little or no joy in their hearts. The days ahead look flat and repetitive, as boring and monotonous as high school class. Faced with this prospect of endless replication, people “lose their edge.” They feel dull – and dulled. They feel trapped, insulated. They “through their motions” of living, but there’s no life in their lives. We hear their dissatisfaction expressed in a couple of different ways which is “I am so overwhelmed these days”. I don’t know how to have fun anymore.” Or “It’s just the same thing day after day. I never do anything that’s fun.” That’s not quite true.
Most of these people have lots of fun. They’ve got their garages filled with all kinds of fun stuff to which I refer as golf clubs, jet skis, mountain bikes, you name it, and they have it all. For many of them “fun” has become an addiction. But as with most addictive substances, people build up tolerance. So despite all the “fun” things people do, they’re still not having fun.
What’s really missing is a sense of joy. People no longer feel an authentic joyfulness in living. Despite all the fun stuff they have or do. And this is the case whether they’re male or female, young or old, rich or poor, or at any stage of life.
What’s happened to people is that they’ve lost a delicate, but critical, component of aliveness and well-being – they’ve lost their eccentricities. It happens too many of us as we grow up and make our way in the world. We fit in. We see how other people survive and we copy their style – same as everyone else. Swept along by the myriad demands of day-today living, we stop making choices of our own. Realizing that we have choices to make.
We lose the wonderful weird edges that define us. We cover up eccentricities that make us unique. Although some of us consider these eccentricities a vital part of a happy and fulfilling lifestyle. Ironically, the very term we do coined – lifestyle - has come to imply something almost entirely opposed to eccentricity. It’s turned out to mean a preconfigured package, formatted for easy consumption.
Lifestyle now relates to things that we buy – someone else’s idea of what we need to be happy. But is anyone really satisfied with these mass marketed ideas of happiness? Us anyone really nourished by a Mclifestyle? It’s no wonder so many people feel they’ve lost their smiles. But more poignantly, how many would even notice if they found them?
The lifestyle of choices around us tends, to beckoning from glossy magazines and flashy commercials. Yet despite all these choices, few of us really feel much freedom to choose. There’s little sense of creative expression, it’s always going somewhere, never being anywhere. As soon as we do opt for something, it begins to chafe because it never really fit us in the first place. We get trapped into thinking we’ll be happy if we behave a certain way, live a certain lifestyles, and purchase all the products that go along with it.
Everywhere we look we see people pursuing people happiness, as if it’s something they could capture and cage. But pinning happiness down only destroys it. It’s too wild for that – it needs room to roam. You have to give it time, let it wander, surprise you.
It’s not just glossy lifestyles people grab for. Instead, some of us try to appropriate slightly more tarnished images – but with just as predictable results.
Prepackage lifestyles let someone else - usually someone fictional – do our living for us. The promise, which is also the curse, is that we can slip on a new lifestyle, including the emotions that go along with it. Easily as slipping in a new item of clothing. The images that go along with the prepackaged lifestyles are always successful ones. Models in catalogues are always smiling and laughing. There trim and fit. Characters on our television shows are – if not always glamorous – at least funny and sure of themselves.
The message is that their prepackaged lifestyles works, so when for us, it doesn’t, we don’t questions the lifestyle, we question ourselves. We think, “Oh, I need something else, one more thing, and then I’ll be happy.” It is a catalogue-shopping approach to the good life. The problem is that every few weeks or around the holidays, every other day there’s a fresh crop of new catalogues. So we’re kept in a constant state of unfulfilled desire. The things we buy don’t satisfy us, but we keep grabbing for more. Were addicted to accumulation, but our tolerance level is so high that enough is never enough. The problem in us as people today is that we have never really developed our own vision of success. We do assume that if we just bought into someone else image of what it means to be happy. It as if they think they can find their smiles by buying a clown mask. But that doesn’t change anything. And as the old songs say, it doesn’t hide the tears when no one’s around. Laughter has a way of breaking down that control. It’s subversive. Nothing like a pie in the face to bring a big shot back down to size.
There are some tips for refining our smile in which we know the feeling we get when we look over old high school yearbook? It’s an odd mixture of relief and regret coupled with a certain disbelief that you ever could have been there or done that. As we repack our bags we’ll probably have similar feelings. What will sustain you though, and make it an enjoyable as well as rewarding experience, will be our ability to see the lighter side of the choices we made. If we can hang on to our smile, we’ll do a better job of repacking and just as importantly, have more fun while doing so. First is Prime your smile. It is easier to keep laughing than to start. So treat yourself to things you find funny as means to get your laughter engine going. Laughter has its roots in shared experience. Secondly, Do play with kids in which kids are funny and they know it. If we spend some time with them – playing, as opposed in trying to make them clean their rooms or whatever – we are certain to find a laugh or three. Thirdly, re-
kindle a romance to which we prefer as our own specifically when we are in love.
For example in which it’s easier to laugh off a traffic jam or missed connecting flights when you are sitting next to someone you really care about. To take the opportunity to rediscover your core connection to the person or people you’re most attached to. Spend some time alone and recall some of the best laughs you’ve had together which I mean literally. Act them out. Re-tell the old jokes. Share the wonderful absurdity of caring deeply for one another. If you can find the humor in your closest personal relationships, you can find the humor in anything. Fourthly, take something incredibly seriously which means the hardest you ever laugh is when you are not supposed to. Used same strategy in your life today, preferably something thats pretty absurd to begin with. If you can see the seriousness of something silly, it can help you turn things around and see the lighterside of something really serious too.Fifth, learn to tell a joke. Basically lots of people claim they can’t tell jokes which means they dont’t. But it doesn’t take any special talent to be funny. It is just you had to have some practice or somehow you can be able to see some of the books that is been sold in the bookstore and grab one of it then try to imitate things out what is been written in there then practice it. For sure they’ll groan when you treat them to a clunker, but you know they’ll be telling the same jokes to their friends first chance they get. Another thing is that Call in well which means there’s nothing quite so delicious as playing hooky. So “call in well” to work one day and just take it easy. Thats it. Lastly, is that of being “deviant”. Why be normal? Dare to be different. Way different. Resolve to do one out of the ordinary things every day for the next couple of days. It can be mundance as taking a different route to work. Or somehow making scared your officemate or your co-worker by dressing up into something very scary. The point in here is that to shake things up. Deviate from your norm. Get out of the usual routine.
See how it feels to do things in a new and different way.
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
How do you define a good life? Basically, all of us have its own meaning and its own interpretation to what really is a good life. It is just only on us on how we can be able to have some identities or something that we can be able to narrate with or naturally share it to others the kind of experiences that we acquire. Its up’s and down’s that tend to help us to go deeper and discover its core of reality. Based on the book that I have read which is entitled Psychology of Happiness is that it defines or conclude that the conditions of life which really make a difference to happiness are those covered by three sources – social relations, work and leisure. And the establishment of a satisfying state of affairs in these spheres does not depend much on wealth, either absolute or relative. You may have a success in life, but then just think of it – what kind of life was it? What good was it? What is it that you have never done in all your life…goes where your body and soul want to go? When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off. For most people, some of the many then without letting anyone throw them off. They wanted time to feed their souls. Often, the search for the good life is depicted as a fleeing the rat race back-to-the-land scenario or as spurred by a crisis psychology neither of which suits our purpose here. For us, the solution is not to be found by running from the rat race or from ourselves but rather, it is unpacking, repacking and lightening our day to day loads. I think some would say or have that thinking that it is an affirmation. Perhaps it has to be considered that way. They saw the good life as a way of conducting themselves of looking at the world and taking part in activities so as to provide for the values they considered essential to the good life. For them as few of the many these values include simplicity, freedom from anxiety or tension, an opportunity to be useful and to live harmoniously. When we ask people to envision their ideal futures or ourselves much, we almost see images of nature. More than enough percent respond that they see a greater degree of daily contact with the out-of-doors basically it refers to parks, oceans, mountains, forest, gardens, sunshine.
As we do travel along the way, we tend to basically see or hear people talk about their vision of the good life. We are amazed at the number of people who are conscious about how to simplify their lives. We tend to have that idea that they might have the feeling of out of control. Finding them driven by a deep urge to find more time for the important things in their lives. Many, however, don’t know where to begin.
In my own definition of a good life is walking through the path of integrity. As I do recall on my math subject that relates into an integer it is a whole. It is a quest in us people to do a good life because that does matter to what is called wholeness as well. The later period of our lives tends to be a time of great inner tension between hope and despair. Somehow others observe it that eventually we will look back on what we have done and how we have loved. How we have demonstrated “integrity” in our lives will determine what we will feel – hope and despair. In some versions, the cure of boredom is not a diversion, it is to find some work to do, something to care about.
Since how we live the next phase of our lives is not just a question of personal lifestyle but of what we care about, we define the good life as an integration of Place, Love, Work and much more Purpose. Simplifying these things it should be “Living in the Place you belong, with the people you Love, doing the Right Work on its Purpose. You may ask what does this mean.
Above all it means that as mentioned in relation to integrity or integration it is a sense of harmony among the various components of one’s life. For example, the place you live provides adequate opportunities for you to do the kind of work you need to do. That your work gives you time to be with the people you really love. And that your deepest friendships contribute to the sense of community you feel in the place you live and work.
The glue that holds the good life together is purpose. Defining your sense of purpose which means the reason you get up in the morning that enables you to continually travel in the direction of your vision of the good life. It helps you keep focusing on where you want to go and discovering new roads to get there. We understand the good life, therefore, as a journey. It is not something we achieve once and hold onto forever. It keeps changing throughout our lives. The balance among place, love, and work is always shifting. At some stages, we’ll be especially on work issues. At other, we’ll become concerned with developing sense of place, putting down roots, building a home for ourselves. And all of us know what it’s like to have loved as our number one concern which maybe all too well.
When we are clear about our purpose, though, it is easier to establish and maintain the necessary se se of balance. Purpose is what keeps us from getting too far sidetracked by issues related place, love or work. Purpose provides perspective and a beacon to keep us on the path we’ve chosen for ourselves. And a way to find ourselves if we started getting lost.
Oddly enough, we find that people who have achieved a harmonious relationship among the the three areas of work, love and place become increasingly less anxious about each of them individually. Their concerns about status usually diminish. Their self-confidence and faith in them seem to grow. They tend to see the universe as a more benevolent place and one in which they can exercise a satisfying degree of autonomy. Some others do describe the good life as a “moving from anxiety to faith to release.” Somehow they see it as shifting from constant worry about their job, their romantic life and home to finally a point where they can let go of their anxieties and frustrations, confident that what they are doing, where they are doing it and who they are doing it for are all in accord. If this sounds a little bit on a spiritual side, that’s because it is. As we mature, our underlying spiritual concerns cannot help but begin coming to the fore. Thus, scored of mid lifers are choosing to trade some of the current externally focused definitions of the good life for something that comes more from the inside. They are giving up gadgets and baubles in exchange of integrity and wholeness in their live. They are pursuing good works – a right livelihood that enables them not just to make a living but to create a meaningful, sustainable live.
We know lots of people and not just baby boomers but plenty of their kids too who have recently committee or made a renewed commitment to a particular place. They’ve bought land or moved to a part of the country that has always meant a lot to them and are making a go at living there despite complications like distance from work or lack of similar services. Or else they have decided not to move from their current home even tough peers and contemporaries are leaving in droves. For some of the many, the internal sense of place is too important a part of what the life means to be ignored. Similarly, many people we know are making work choices that may not be so great for their “careers” but that are exactly what they need to do for themselves. And it’s a truism, but it’s certainly true these days, people generally are not looking for more relationships, they are looking for more out of the relationships they already have. Love is a remarkably delicate commodity, one that seems more precious than ever before. We see a renewed interest on the part of partners and friends we know in making things work which is an increased appreciation fir the value of the connection and more willingness to do whatever it takes to grow together rather than grow apart. People are turning inward to develop a new understanding and appreciation for a vision of the good life that takes into account place, work and or love. In developing this vision, they are quite naturally unpacking and repacking each of these bags. And in doing so they are also quite naturally overcoming the fears that hold so many others back from their own vision of the good life.
Establishing and maintaining long – term loving relationships keeps us from feeling alone. More than I know that a life without love, without the presence of the beloved is nothing but a mere magic lantern show. We draw out each slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each and pushing it back to make haste for the next. Finding our home, creating a sense of place which enables us to stop feeling lost. Designing the good life becomes then, the simple matter of finding and keeping adequate space for love, place and work in your life. Creating the good life is a similar process. Life can never be adequately discussed or conceptualized, but only created in a way of living our own questions, on our own way of continuous unpacking and repacking of our own back pack or luggage’s.
People who are “artist at living” which I mean they are much on the kind of person that tends to make such beautification of their own are bold enough to questions the status quo - which is it to accept that someone else’s truth could be a lie for them. In some ways they are also willing to recognize when their own truths have became a dead end in which case they demonstrate the courage to let go. Which somehow they accept what they can from an experience and move on. Basically, that’s what makes a man move to look forward. Generally speaking, people do not always make breakthroughs because we refused to quit in some under in any circumstances which that depends on the kind of situation indeed when realizing that enough is not enough. That old patters are not serving them, that even its time to repack their own luggage’s and baggage’s.
We have defined the good life as living in the place I belong, with the people I love, doing the right work on purpose. As we see its place, relationships, work and purpose are the corner stone’s of a well – lived life. Although we have tried to present this as clearly and creatively as possible, there’s always nothing all that groundbreaking about our definition. Many of the thoughtful people or educated with the highest degrees of courses as to their titles for the most part their answers are not all that different than our own.
Perhaps we wonders about the biggest of the big questions that we tend to find some answers to which it is somehow unexplainable in a certain way questioning in general terms what is the meaning of life? With this kind of question that we tend to realize and reflect needless to say and absolutely we do have different answers as to its perspective. Indeed, since everything everyone does is ultimately aimed at happiness, that the meaning of life the reason we are all here is happiness. Of course, if this is the case, we still have to define what happiness really is. Although, we define it in a way we understand happiness as pleasure, honor and wealth still the life of pleasure is not authentically happy. Why? It is for the reason that if all we strive for is sensual pleasure then perhaps we are really no better than beasts, human clearly have greater potential for meaningful lives. A life of pure pleasure is unworthy of what’s best about us. Another reason maybe is that as we all know, the single-minded pursuit of pleasure is self-defeating. Overindulgence in the sensual pleasure always leads to hangovers of one sort or another. We end up feeling worse and less happy than we did before we started seeking pleasure. The pursuit of honor doesn’t yield authentic happiness for its honor depends so much upon what people may think. if we think being famous will make as happy we’re constantly going to be at the mercy of other people’s opinions and is undoubtedly a recipe for unhappiness if not downright disaster. Another bet in here for such reasons is that of wealth. Wealth can’t be the definition of happiness although it is being conceptualized by many of us because if you have the money you can have everything you wanted to have but let us not forget that money may too also cause something that we might regret in the end. Sometimes, we do tend to argue or make some inner and deeper examination that money can’t be synonymous with happiness because unlike happiness it is not something we aspire to as an end in itself or it is not something we attain rather happiness is an activity ultimately it is an exercise of moral and intellectual virtue. In simple words, happiness is going to be doing what we are meant to do in the best way possible. It is not something you get but it is something you do. It involves living, relating and working on purpose. It is not something about what we have or what people think of us but it is about how we live our lives. Real happiness comes from setting our own lives within a larger context. While it is certainly the case that our own happiness flows out of the fulfillment of our own individual interest and desires, it’s equally obvious that there’s something more, something bigger than our particular perspective on things. There are of course, innumerably different modes of living, all variables in themselves. But at the same times it is clear that every life, however it is lived, need s to have certain elements within it’s for an individual’s satisfaction and happiness. A life lived without connection to this larger context is missing something, something deeper and ultimately, something to real happiness.
Identifying the connection between an individual’s vision of his or her own good life and the good life in general is difficult but we strongly believe that the connection needs to be made. The key to value is to expand diversity while at the same time maintaining unity. For instance, we can imagine a life that’s much unified, that is in which the person has clear ideals, but in which there is very little variation. Conversely, we can imagine who has an incredible diverse range of experience, but whose life is not very well organized in terms of purpose. Neither of these lives is apt to be as satisfying and meaningful for the people living them as a life that is rich in experience but coherent of purpose. As for me an effective way to enhance diversity while maintaining unity is to connect our interest and desires to something bigger. This larger context can be made manifest through all sorts of approaches which is a heightened sense of community, a commitment to the overall environment, a spiritual practice that places our own lives within fuller perspective even a sense of purpose from an organizational standpoint. What is important is that we have a sense of place regarding the source of our conception of the good life. While the manner in which we express ourselves is going to be highly individual. The central core of what we aspire to needs its seems, to be grounded in something other than our own individual inspirations. We make the meaning of our own lives in other words but that meaning apparently depends on something outside them.
As we negotiate the ages and stages of our lives, we continually give us parts of ourselves. We somehow unpack and discover new parts that somehow we tend to pack up. People who stay packed out of fear or unwillingness to let go gain only a false sense of security. By covering up, wearing masks and shutting down they eventually experience a death which not literally I mean but a death of self respect. Unfortunately, very few of us have anything in our development that provides us with the knowledge and skills to unpack and repack our bags. The self-awareness required to know what to pack and the discipline needed to realize what to leave behind typically come totally as a result of trial and error. With little skill even less direction, how is it possible to know how much to carry? It’s no wonder that so many of us are burning out from carrying too much.
