Beware The Ideal of A Good Life

Since people had time to sit around and think about stuff, they have wondered how they should live, and what a "good life" is. Not a fun life, or an exciting life, or a boring life, or a safe life, all of which are very easy to define in any given society at any given time, but the far more elusive "good life". Whatever that is. Kudos in funeral orations or obituaries? Nobel Prizes? A life lived without once appearing before the magistrates on some sordid or serious charge? What feels worthy, or righteous, or proper, or grown-up, or spiritual, or, well, anything that lets us claim virtue-status over the mere hedonists?

The psychologists have come up with just such a description. Not for what you or I would call a good life if we lived it, but what liberal, middle-class, postgraduate-degree-holding, urban-living, people familiar with the pop-culture would think they should say if asked what makes people feel as if they are living a good life.

Invariably it looks something like this (taken with minor edits from an actual source):

1. Healthy living and functioning

2. Having hobbies and recreational pursuits we enjoy 

3. Doing work that allows us to feel, from time to time, as if we are highly competent at the job 

4. Relatedness - intimate, romantic, and familial relationships 

5. Connection to wider social groups 

6. Feeling good in the here and now 

7. Inner peace - freedom from emotional turmoil and stress 

8. Feeling well informed about things that are important to us 

9. A sense of autonomy, power and self-directedness 

10. Finding meaning and purpose in life 

11. Creativity allowing self-expression

Seriously. This is what they came up with. Word for word. My heart sinks every time I look at it. It's so darn... icky-sweet-nice. Like those articles about Ten Things Dying Patients Say - Number Seven Will Surprise You. I seriously doubt anyone ever said they regretted working too hard. Everyone I've ever seen working long hours has been doing so to avoid going back to the Divorce Flat, or a housemates-marriage. But I digress...

There are no qualifications, no conditions. It's mind-snappingly obvious (I will feel better if I'm not exposed to emotional turmoil and stress, and if I feel good in the here and now? Gee, who knew?), and also highly non-specific (what the hey is "healthy living and functioning" in a world where there is research to condemn or praise any darn diet or exercise regime under the sun?). Which is intentional. It is supposed to get us arguing about what it means, rather than whether it should be there at all.

Because there is no such thing as a "good life". The term is entirely moral. The goodness of a life does not flow from the facts about it, but from our approval of it.

Real lives are up, down and sideways. Real lives do not follow strict sleep hygiene and regular exercise routines, and not for long if they do try. Real lives follow pop-culture fads and family traditions; experiment with yoga and vegetarian diets, before changing to Parkruns and protein with every meal; bring home ideas from holidays, and have sudden impulses to do something "really random"; they stay up too late on Saturday night, sleep in Sunday, and have difficulty getting to sleep Sunday night because tomorrow is Monday. Real lives have hangovers, food poisoning, bad colds, a touch of flu, and hours of un-natural stamina and strength to deal with something serious.

Real lives contain moments of which the person may be proud or ashamed; events which they would be happy to repeat and those they wish had never happened; long periods of routine slogging and short moments of real joy; periods of low morale looking for jobs in a weak economy, and periods when the savings increased; tragic and sad events involving hospitals and funeral services, happy events also involving hospitals and churches or registry offices; days when the work flowed easily and other days when the simplest task seemed to go wrong; years of health taken for granted, and a few weeks of illness that meant they would never take health for granted again; accidents narrowly missed, exams passed, chance meetings that lead to friendship or romance; and long weeks where nothing happened and the sun never shone.

Real lives are lived by lifetime bachelors, serial divorcees, childhood sweethearts, room-mates raising children, married couples still in love after twenty years, and couples divorced after ten years. They are lived by hard-workers and shirkers; liars and honest people; talented people and frauds; do-gooders and criminals; saints and sinners - and many people are all of those for a few moments or more.

How frakked-up would someone need to be, to look at their life and say that it is a bad life? A drunk, an addict, an habitual gambler, a serious criminal, a shirker, a vexatious neighbour, a plagiarist, a manager who under-paid their staff and welched on their debts...

So if you're no longer one of those, or never were...

You're fine. Hold your head up.