What Makes a Good Life?

Some time ago now I came to realize that how we define particular words – success, happiness, love, etc – can have a major impact on the way in which we live our life. One term that I hear thrown around often is “good life”, eg “he lived a good life” . But what is a good life exactly? This term will mean different things to different people, and yet I believe there are some ingredients that all “good lives” share. Here are a some of these ingredients:

Being present in the moment

“Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.” – Corita Kent

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde

Gratefulness

“Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want to have something else or something more.” – Brother David Steindl-Rast

Love

“Love doesn’t make the world go ’round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” – Franklin P. Jones

“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” – Victor Hugo

A life lived for others

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill

Squeezing the most out of our time

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln

“… we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” – Paul Bowles

Living with purpose

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” – Robert Byrne

Acceptance that life will bring sadness

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” – Carl Jung

Living without fear

“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.” – Dorothy Thompson

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

Not taking life too seriously

“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” – Elbert Hubbard

Do you have a quote that you would like to share? Or perhaps even your own definition of what a “good life” is? Please share it in the comments below….

Photo by disparkys