Life is a time gifted to us by the divine and frankly a roller coaster ride we enjoy being alive, a journey that we all board from the very beginning of our birth. By the time we harness the power of rationality and proper understanding of our surrounding as a whole we begin to query into the philosophical discourse. As a lay observer of time and conditions we gain consciousness of our heart. Through our emotional development, we seek upon the abstract purpose or a goal of life that is, “happiness”. Our eternal satisfaction of life is the way we want it to be. Spending our entire life living for that purpose we strive towards it, we make memories, good and bad; we agree and disagree; we feel love and feel left out at times; we make and unmake success no matter how big or small and many. It contributes to all the small slices of our existence. The time we bear our physical embodiment in this earth is very limited. It all wraps up altogether at the end when we lay on our backs in the life support of a hospital bed, counting our last few moments and reminiscing about our life we lived. In the meanwhile, if we are lucky enough we are visited by our loved ones for the very last time. We hear them comforting us with the words. And after a while the tragedy strucks, we reach the very catatonic point of our journey that we boarded on. Likewise we were born into this magnificent universe years ago, at that point of end; we cease to no longer exist in this universe anymore. We embark into the nothingness, we die.
For the sake of a much clearer inquiry, let’s assume it’s our funeral. We are dead. Our body is surrounded by our loved ones who came before to visit us in the hospital when we were alive. Some of them are talking about the things that say, how will we be remembered or did we had a good life? The first thing that we must take in account is that whether the value of our life is determined by the liver of that life or by other people. It puts a substantial interrogation that what actually constitutes a good life. What if our last minute thought was that we had a perfect life but when our loved ones sit around and discuss that our life was literally dreadful? Is this crude juxtaposition could be accepted? Could they be right and we be wrong about our own life? Or it can be the either way around that, everyone thinks that we had a beautiful contented life but we die miserably, feeling our life was nothing but a total waste. In this case, we are aware that our own outlook determines the extract of a worthy life but the thing most often asked is that what a good life looks like. The way we think we should live, the working towards our goal that we care, the tough choices we make, the way we spend our time and the satisfaction we gain from them are the things that shape the life we lead.
According to the French philosopher Albert Camus, all humans are the literal personification of the Greek legend Sisyphus who was known for rolling up a boulder all up to mountain which was to be falling back down again and he had to do it over and over. This was condemned upon him as an eternal punishment and it was the brutal entirety of his existence. This tale of Sisyphus relating to all of us is perhaps sounds unhopeful and that life is meaningless but surely Camus had a different approach. He said that we must consider Sisyphus happy; I mean how is that possible and accepted to us? Sisyphus devoted his entire life to escape the grimes of death and yet the hard-own life he possesses now as Camus says accomplishes nothing. Camus, however uses the myth to showcase a symbol for all of mankind. He exemplified that every single day, month or year we witness our own venture seemingly repeat themselves as we are made to pursue them. We watch our own boulder roll down the hill again only to be pushed
back up with the zeal to equip the changes that come along. This acknowledges the fact that life is absurd and that trying to find a meaning in the absurd is the goal. Nothing in this universe or nothing any of us does have any inherit meaning of its own, but it is always us and we who choose to give it meaning. For many the tale of Sisyphus is depressing because on one side it says nothing we do matters but on the other side of the spectrum it also says anything we do matters followed by how we choose to imbue it with value. Fathoming it as an existentialist viewpoint, it comes with a power pact message which reminds us that we and only we have the power to make our lives great. We are the only ones who can evaluate its greatness. A good life never exerts the saltiness of the advices that are given to us by the “Motivational speakers” that says to not to sleep and hustle until your dreams are pursued. They surely prepare us to leap toward our dreams but they forget that when we hustle, we are going “against” something. The true indistinctive nature is that we don’t go with the flow, we don’t feel the essence of life and the moments we live even if we know we have a limited number of them. We in this materialistic squalor are so deeply convinced that a good life is defined by the status quo and reputation that we forgot how to live. Material success is merely overrated; it only sterilizes a set of enigmatic rules that if not being obeyed we are leading the wrong way. What constitutes a good life is up always up to the individual. Its typical notions include that how well we did good deeds for others, how well we adhered to our ethics, how well we were productive and smeared our life with a meaningful purpose. The set of purposes we endorse in the long run actually proves what kind of success we define no matter how it be. Aristotle argued in his principles that “Man” is a rational being, so living a good life means striving for experiences and seeking to know. Know our world, know ourselves and endeavour to govern ourselves with reasons. It also means to live a life that is worthwhile; a life that makes a contribution instead of being solely egocentric. It is a life that is not wasted in mundane activities but on the other hand adds value and contributes to make this world a better place. Even more, it also contributes to our own growth and to understand the meaning of satisfaction from every small things we do. It can be reflected upon the people who simply asks why, who are willing to challenge something that doesn’t seem right, to listen to other people’s opinion and to be sincerely ready to accept new truths. It also means to never stop questioning and never stop making an effort for truth. To continue to live better, to know more, to learn and to revise our position of how we think based on new evidence. A good life is arbitrary in exact and can't be figured in any golden rule book to read and acquire its principles, it doesn’t conceptualize anything in particular but the main aspects; rather than be the examples of Sisyphus or existentialism, a good life can never have a clear meaning. Until, it has been introspected, lived by not having less worries and pain but by how we observed them, questioned them and learn from them to mould our life as we want and finally be the best version of ourselves to say in our last breathes that, “Yes, I had a good life.”
“ You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way." _Walter Hagen.
Quite a writeup...