The good life is not first and foremost about acquisition, power, luxury, or status. It is not about celebrity. And it’s not an existence of unbridled, self–indulgent excess.
The life that is good must be founded on an attitude of respect and nurture toward the intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual needs of every human being. It begins in an inner circle of family, extends to friends and co-workers, and finally reaches out across all artificial and natural boundaries to all of life on this earth.
The good life involves freedom, love, work, pleasure, challenge, friendship, community, service, and the sort of resources that can be used creatively.
The greatest obstacles to the good life are not external things at all, but are those inner vices that have been identified and understood since the time of the ancient philosophers. Envy, resentment, bitterness, malice, mendacity, and prejudice are all enemies of the good life and obstacles to its being lived.
The best life is a meaningful, creative, open adventure that brings opportunity, learning, laughter, and joy into the lives of other people. It’s a life that connects up with the deepest realities and aspires toward the highest possibilities.
Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly; and it would seem that the same is true of the good. – Bertrand Russell
The good life will differ in its particularities for each of us. But its general outlines are universal.
- Tom Morris
No comments:
Post a Comment