When I think of how I would answer the question, the following behaviours come to mind:
* Creating: Writing, drawing, painting (though I’m not good at it), playing music (though I’m not especially good at that, either). For others, it might be inventing something, building a business, coming up with a clever marketing campaign, forming a non-profit.
* Relating: It’s not “family” that makes life worth living, I think, but the relationships we create with members of our family, and the way we maintain and build those relationships. Same goes for friends, love, business partners, students, and everyone else.
* Helping: Being able to lend a hand to people in need – however drastic or trivial that need may be – strikes me as an important part of life.
* Realizing: Making, working towards, and achieving goals, no matter what those goals are.
* Playing: Maybe this is a kind of “relating”, but then, play can be a solo affair as well. Letting go of restraints, imagining new possibilities, testing yourself against others or against yourself, finding humor and joy.
* Growing: Learning new things, improving my knowledge and ability in the things I’ve already learned.
Those seem satisfying answers to me – they strike deeper into what it is I want for myself, what makes it worthwhile to get up in the morning.
What about you? What makes your life worth living?
Do you feel like I’m headed down the wrong path here?
How would you answer the question, “What makes life worth living?”
– Dustin Wax.
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There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love. – Lord Byron.
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The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” – Albert Camus.
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As a responsible citizen of the world, it is your duty and the duty of each of us to contribute what we can during the flash of light called Time, which exists as one moment following another while we are here, together, alive.
Anyone who feels s/he is ‘extra baggage’ and using resources and not enjoying her or his life, should NEVER end it.
Instead, that feeling of unhappiness is the whisper in your ear, the pinch of pain needed to motivate you to DO SOMETHING ELSE in life besides whatever it is you are doing now that makes you so unhappy.
Unhappiness and frustration, disappointment and pain, are there for a reason. They are there to tell us it is time to change.
What will you do?
Consider what your strengths are. If you are physically healthy and capable please go to an area ravaged by earthquake, tornado or poverty, and contribute what you can to others. Get trained by The Red Cross in lifesaving techniques, setting up resources after devastation — and make your life the ripple in the pond which spreads blessings and gives value instead of consuming value.
– American Red Cross.
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“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company … a church … a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude … I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you … we are in charge of our Attitudes.”
– Charles Swindle.
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People are going to come into your life that need you, and being there for them makes the day worth living. People are going to come into your life that you need, and that’s the really crazy thing. – Amy Grant.
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One of the most important things about life to all of us is that our core needs are met.
Societies based on materialism focus on all ways on materialistic growth and development in the community. Materialism does not meet the needs of the soul.
“Things”are not worth living for. People are worth living for. Living for the greater good of all should be inspired within is all and taught in all forms of education.
Breathable health oxygen, healthy food, clean healthy water, shelter and sleep are basic physical needs that help us function well.
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Max-Neef classifies the fundamental human needs as:
Subsistence – protection – affection – understanding – participation – leisure – creation – identity – freedom.
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Based on more than 30 years of psychological counseling and pastoral care, Howard Clinebell believes that humans have seven spiritual hungers in common:
* All people need to experience regularly the healing and empowerment of love – from others, self, and an ultimate source.
* Everyone needs to experience renewing times of transcendence – moments that expand us beyond the immediate sensory spheres.
* Everybody needs vital beliefs that give some sense of meaning and hope the midst of losses, tragedies, and failures.
* Every person needs to have values, priorities, and life commitments – usually centered in issues of justice, integrity, and love – that guide us in personally and socially responsible living.
* Each human being needs to discover and develop their inner wisdom, creativity and love of their unique transpersonal/spiritual self.
* All people need a deepening awareness of oneness with other people and with the natural world, the wonderful web of all living things.
* Every human being needs spiritual resources to help heal the painful wounds of grief, guilt, resentment, unforgiveness, self-rejection, and shame. We also need spiritual resources to deepen our experiences of trust, self-esteem, hope, joy and love of life.
Clinebell feels that everybody must pay attention to these needs to feel whole and fulfilled, making spirituality central to human well-being (Clinebell, 1992).
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We all need to find our own reason to live, and that could take many years to discover, or we may not ever make that discovery but we will have a life that felt worth living.
We need Love, we would like to be Understood, it would be nice to be Heard, people should Respect Us enough to give us a chance to try to live “our own way” and not make fun of us when we want to follow our own instinctive feelings and creative imagination.
Parents and teenagers need to note that society creates many divides which create a invisible wall between them. Music, attitudes, fads, fashion, technology, language (slang etc), peer pressure and pride can cause the parents/teenagers relationship to suffer enough for the teenagers to seek relationships, guidance and entertainment elsewhere.
If both parents and teenagers are always aware of this they can prepare for it and adjust their lives and actions accordingly to re-establish the relationship if need be. Together families and communities can survive for the greater good of all.
One of the joys of life is communities, the people, working together to make life better for each other – that is the work of love.
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All the best from
James M Sandbrook.
April 10, 2016 at 11:49 AM.