One Life to Live

Faced with the inconceivable but relentless fact of our personal extinction, we need to figure out how to live life while we have it.  Men and women have thought long and hard about living a good life and finding happiness or bliss in life.  In my own words and for myself, I think that achieving a sense of well-being and contentment in life is a possibility and is sufficient for a good life.

To have a sense of well-being and contentment is to have no fear.  No fear of others, of personal failure, of illness, of death.  It is not the feeling of well-being and contentment that a good meal and drink induces, nor any other temporary state induced by a satisfied appetite.  It is, rather, an overall and continuing state of calmness and acceptance, a state in which one is comfortable with one’s self.  The self is not a fortress where one defiantly takes a stand or a place where one cringes in self-absorption.  It is rather the place in which one can flourish.

The kind of well-being and contentment I have in mind permits an openness and concern for others, because there is no fear of others.  However, it does not preclude prudence.  I am not thinking of a happy-go-lucky carelessness that usually hurts others, but rather the exercise of foresight and appropriate action within one''s means and abilities.  Those who experience well-being and contentment know what their means and capabilities are and accept them.  They do not waste living time in fantasies and illusions beyond themselves or in pretense or in frustration about circumstances they cannot change.  They live within their boundaries with satisfaction.

So humble a life?  So limited in [LR1] life?  So undistinguished a life?  Yes, indeed!  With one life to live, it is my thought that if each day is to count, and at the end of the day or even in the middle of the day, we can say, “I am content with myself and with my life," we would be maximizing our living time.

Why are we all not living a life of well-being and contentment?  Why, instead, are we more often living contentious lives with fear, anger and discouragement, lives of boredom and fatigue, as uncaring time, relentlessly, passes us by?  Blindly, we look outside ourselves to others as our only clue for a better life, because we do not know the principles and guidelines for living a good life.  We erroneously believe we can enhance our lives or, perhaps, escape our lives by immersion:  immersion in the Great Sea of Externals.  The more involved, the more absorbed we are in our work, entertainment, relationships, gossip and games, the more distracted we become.  We abdicate control of our lives to external mandates, transferring responsibility for our lives to a perceived inevitability.  “That''s life," we say, with courage and resignation as we make the most of our fate, seeking occasional relief in parties and adventure travel.  Meanwhile, we look outside ourselves to others who will show us the way, who also will cheer us along the way and who will reassure us and comfort us should we falter or have misgivings.

But in looking outside ourselves to others, we betray ourselves.  We are looking the wrong way.  The path to assurance, security, well-being, contentment and happiness in our one life experience will be found not outside but inside ourselves where we alone can change our lives.