What do you want for your life?

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Live well? Meaning? Fulfillment? Happiness?

All of that, naturally.

Do you live well and/or gain fulfillment better (or more likely) by seeking “happiness”; or do you gain happiness more/better by living well and/or gaining fulfillment? Do you gain fulfillment by living well; or live well by seeking fulfillment?

There’s good reason to distinguish superficial happiness from deep happiness—or call the difference ephemeral happiness and authentic happiness (which is a durability of “happiness”).

So, what is “well-being”? Certainly, it’s more than ephemeral happiness. Is well-being better understood as living well (or be-ing well) than understood through a focus on happiness in general? Is the pursuit of happiness itself (as target: "Happiness!") misguided because authentic happiness is the result of being well, not the aim of living? (rhetorical question, of course)

I feel (and think) that being well integrally includes seeking fulfillment (not mere satisfaction or pleasure), which is what makes a notion of well-being appealing.

In gaining fulfillment, gaining Meaning, and actualizing worthwhile values, we are engaged with living, not like healthy plants or animals (gaining homeostasis like a purring engine), but as purposeful, interested, active human lives full of desire that drives—even higher-order desires that evince manifold flourishing!—desires that travel (with minimal travail), that advance one's being.

I’ve been working to detail such a view. It’s fun (but not to be tiresomely florid). Results of this will be central for the site of—deserving to be basic to—"being well" (which will spring from early 2017, at last).

The good list of what you want for your life could be endless, but there are regions of being (gravities of keynote notions) in which all the possible items, aspirations, desires, etc. tend to belong; for instance: being well, finding and sustaining high meaningfulness (Meaning), gaining and sustaining fulfillment—and having lots of fun.

I’m sure Einstein had fun mathematizing gravity, which was published a century ago today (evidently).

How we are speeding along in Our evolving!

Here’s thanksgiving for all lovely cohering.



This posting is associated with the “being well” area of gedavis.com.

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