What is “the good life?”
It is one of the oldest philosophical questions with commentators ranging from philosophers like Artisotle to Kanye West (“welcome to the good life”) to a popular Ted Talk on the longest ongoing study weighing in to offer their opinion (worth a watch).
We have organized our society (at least those of us in America) around Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, we (some of us) are free to pursue our own version of the good life.
The problem (one of the many) is that an individual’s conceptualization of “the good life” is a tapestry of interwoven and overlapping narratives, concepts, experiences, stories, and beliefs. Some of these are personal. Many of them are not - at least at first. Many of our beliefs about “the good life” come from somewhere outside ourselves - parents, society, significant others, social media, TikTok (apparently).
We look to others to derive meaning and get a sense of what is important (or at least what should be).
The stories and beliefs we allow into our consciousness are important. They order our consciousness, narrow our attention and focus, and construct our identity. We build our Self around the concepts we allow into our awareness and judge our experiences (and our Self) against them.
Bill Hicks said, “if you want to understand a society, take a look at the drugs it uses.”
The same can be said of its stories.
If you want to understand society (and the people that construct and give life to it), take a look at its stories.
You can understand their values and strivings, what they hold near and dear, and what they consider to be important and worthwhile. In other words, you will know what they consider to be “the good life.”
These stories and ideas matter because they become a part of the identity of the individuals that make up that society. We are, in one way or another, forced to reckon with those stories, either through our acceptance of and pursuit of them or through rejecting them. Either way, it’s something we have to talk about (and begrudgingly justify) at Thanksgiving dinner.
“You moved into a van?” “You’re getting a women’s studies degree? Why not something more practical, like your brother? He’s a successful lawyer.”
This is a rough version of the American story of “the good life:”
Work hard in high school, get good grades (do whatever you can - even if it’s somewhat shady - to make sure this happens), do lots of extracurriculars (not because you enjoy them but because they’ll look good on a college application)
Get into a good college, repeat the remaining steps while substituting college application for job application
Get a good job, work hard but forget about extracurriculars. Those are for peasants and you’re a hard-worker now, you’re climbing the corporate ladder. Impress boss. Schmooze. Bite your tongue.
Buy a home. Buy a car.
Get a raise.
Buy a bigger home. Buy a better car.
Get another raise.
Make more home improvements. Get another car.
Rinse. Repeat.
Until retirement and then….
…now we’re cooking.
You’ve got a solid 10 years left to really enjoy life…
but what was it that you actually liked doing?
The better the car, the bigger the house, the better and higher-paying the job, the more successful you will be. The more successful you become, the happier you will be.
So the story goes.
Science, psychology, thousands of years of philosophy, and five minutes in a psychologist’s office will tell you that the pursuit of material success and wealth for their own sake is a recipe for disaster. They, and they alone, cannot and will not make you happy.
In fact, they’re likely to make you unhappy. If you are doing things only for the potential reward, you will be unhappy. Mix that with the external validation seeking (“check out my nice car! I’m super important and successful…) and you’ve got yourself a gnarly cocktail of self-despair and existential crisis.
Take a look at the record-high levels of anxiety and depression or the shockingly high number of middle-aged men committing suicide. We are maladjusted to the pursuits of modern life. Our consciousness is not focused properly. We have mistakenly ordered our Self. We have organized our identities around beliefs and values that will lead to unhappiness.
Despite what I mistakenly thought for years, there’s nothing inherently wrong with enjoying material things - so long as they are a byproduct of the pursuit of your version of the good life, not the thing that you think makes life good or worth living.
One of the pathways to “a good life” - perhaps the only pathway - is reflecting on and constructing OUR own personal version of the good life. We must seek out experiences for their own sake. We must define success and happiness for ourselves.
We must set the rules of our own game.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (chick-sent-mahi…like the fish), author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Performance, calls this, “the autotelic self.”
“The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if initially undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically rewarding.”
This is an autotelic experience. He explains:
“The term “autotelic” derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward. Playing the stock market in order to make money is not an autotelic experience; but playing it in order to prove one’s skill at foretelling future trends is—even though the outcome in terms of dollars and cents is exactly the same. Teaching children in order to turn them into good citizens is not autotelic, whereas teaching them because one enjoys interacting with children is. What transpires in the two situations is ostensibly identical; what differs is that when the experience is autotelic, the person is paying attention to the activity for its own sake; when it is not, the attention is focused on its consequences.”
These experiences elevate life to a new level. The more of them we can craft, the better our life will be.
The autotelic Self - the one with access to optimal experience - orders its own consciousness. It decides for itself what is important and meaningful. The autotelic Self decides what success, happiness, and the good life are for itself.
The “good life” must be lived according to our own Nature. In order for our life to be “good,” we must first define what “good” is…according to us and free from societal expectations and coercion. Wondering what society deems a productive way to spend a life is not the same as wondering how you might like to spend your day, what might give you purpose, and where you might find yourself deeply engaged in life.
You may end up at the same place but how you arrive there matters. Why you do things - and who you do them for - matters.
I’d be remiss to write this extensively about “the good life” without mentioning two things:
1.) The murder of Ahmaud Arbery - a man who was shot and killed while on a run for being black in public in a country still grappling with issues of race. I will be running 2.23 miles this afternoon to celebrate his life
2.) My own mother - who reads this newsletter. I would not be here without you (and I mean that in several ways). Thank you for everything you do and for everything you are. Thank you for having me as your son. I appreciate you. And I love you.
Here’s what I’m reading this week:
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
And What I’m Listening to:
And here are my notes on what I read last week:
HIGH-LEVEL THOUGHTS:
The world is evolving; the way we work is evolving (or needs to) to keep up. Old assumptions about what it takes to succeed in business are outdated. There are new and better ways of doing things.
Link to the full notes below:
That’s it for this week.
I am grateful that I have the privilege to determine how and when and where I live my life. I am grateful to have a life. And I am grateful to be in pursuit of the good life. I’m off for my run where I’ll be meditating on that.
Until next time.
Thank you for being here with me.
KB