What is a good life?
A question for us all.
Thoughts on life, a good enough life.
Educational blogs? Not really.
Blog journals, diary blogs. Musings.

What makes a life feel "good enough"?

May 13, 2011

I stepped into half a dozen lives recently, almost all older lives. An aunt over 80. A couple in their seventies. A friend over sixty. Two cousins approaching 60.

In other words, all the lives were, very likely, more than half-lived.

And a question kept going through my mind: how satisfied, on a deep level, are these people with the lives they have lived?

I kept feeling, in every case - and also in mine - that much more would be possible, would have been possible, that they (and I) had much more potential.

Not quite oak trees in tiny pots. But still, in ways, hemmed in - or cut - by something. Like a cousin did not follow the career path that strongly called her because her mother said such negative things about it. No prohibition - no social blocks - something had cut her from listening to herself, and something had cut her mother from encouraging her daughter to to go for what was right for her. This is still a big regret for this cousin.

It wasn't the same for everyone - sometimes it's just that I felt ... so much more would be possible.

I read Outliers recently, Malcolm Gladwell's book on the factors that make some people reach phenomenal success. A brilliant book, that moves success away from primarily a personal achievement, to something that comes in good measure from being at the right time and place, with the right family, friends, environment.

But my big concern, here, isn't with what we need to have a good enough life - though maybe that's part of it.

My big concern: what is a good life?

A very brief answer: it has to feel right to us. Right enough, anyway.

I have a longing to reach way more into the world. It's been there since adolescence. Over the years I've thought more, had more to communicate, listened more, learned more. Still have far to go in terms of reaching others.

In the people I met, I noticed that quite a number had such a drive to communicate their lives, their experiences. I came away with the sense that they felt they had much more to give, to show, to communicate.

I'm not saying their lives felt too small for them.

I do know mine still feels too small for me.

What is a good life?

I don't have a recipe. I do know when things feel good.

I have the sense of having spent much of my life trying to find a way to get past obstacles that would not have been obstacles to some others - had I developed other inner skills. I'm still at it, trying to get to be an "outlier", one of those who really succeeds in bringing their gifts to life with the help of the right resources.

My question to you, how close are you, as you experience it, to what is, for you, a good life? And how close to a good full life do you see most people?

Elsa

What is a good life?
For me, it includes a good match
Otherwise, so much loneliness.

How to get a good life?
I've found my own lucky penny,
is one of my strategies.

What is a good life? A question for us all.
Thoughts on life, a good enough life.
Educational blogs? Maybe.
Blog journals, diary blogs.
Musings.