Showing posts with label The good life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The good life. Show all posts

Monday, December 9, 2019

What is the good life?

The compelling question of my life began when I was nine of ten years old. I don't know where it came from but I found myself muttering, "It can be a good life if you know how to live it," which said another way is "What is the good life?"

I think I have been philosophical since I was a little boy.

For a while I though it was God and my Catholicism which would give me the answer but by age 19 I knew that was not true. I asked too many questions and the priests would get frustrated with them and say, "Well, David, it is a mystery," or "You have to take that on faith." I decided at 19 that there were too many "mysteries" and required too much "faith" so I found a woman I loved, got married at 20 and had nine kids.

At 22 I found the profession of Psychiatric Social Work and I have been pondering the question of what is the good life ever sense not only personally but professionally with clients and colleagues. At the age of 73 I have finally found the answer and its one that few people would understand. 

The answer is "forgiveness" which means being willing to give up making other people and things responsible for my unhappiness. So, I see my life now as full of forgiveness opportunities. Whenever I find myself fearful, guilty, angry, resentful, I remind myself with the help of the Holy Spirit that I am not a victim, but the beloved child of God and that making other people and things responsible for my unhappiness is a mistake. I have the power to choose and I choose to be more aware of Love's presence in my life which I can do if I give up the misguided notion that things external to me in the world of the ego are going to do that for me.

This forgiveness has brought a great peace in my life and as my life nears the end, I am grateful that I have finally come to figure this out. I have also figured out that it is not how much you know that makes a difference but how much you love. We need not think alike to love alike and as the Beatles sang, "Love is all you need."

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Monday, May 26, 2014

What's the good life after it's all said and done?

"I don't know what you expect of me, Mother," Andreas says.
I want you to be joyful, I don't say.

Linda McCullough Moore, "On My Way Now", The Sun, April, 2014, p.18

Editor's note:

Indeed all I want for myself, you, and everyone in the world is to be joyful. Joy is different from pleasure, happiness, and bliss. Joy is a kind of contentment, an overall sense of well being. A sense that I'm okay, and you're okay and if not, that's still okay.

All human beings deserve to be joyful. The question is what kind of life will make them so? What does Unitarian Universalism have to teach us in this regard of living the good life?
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