What Makes A Life Worth Living?

Perhaps it is safe to say that most everyone in the deranged world that we live in today aims for happiness. Some would even say we are simply slaves to our primal passions, shackled in our endless pursuit of fulfillments and shaping our existence around them. Gravitating towards the things in life that bring us pleasure, and recoiling away from those that could cause us pain. A lot of individuals think of happiness as an overall end goal, while others consider happiness the starting point of being great. Nevertheless, happiness is drawn from different things based off the individual.

The everlasting question of "What is Happiness?" has been inquired since the creation of men. Unfortunately, the only agreed answer that humanity came up with is that all the creatures seek happiness, but no one has the concrete directions for achieving it. Our libraries are overwhelmed with books about happiness, but no dictionary definition explains which path men must take to be happy. No mathematician gave us the axiom which we could use to solve the problem of living in bliss. No scientist brought up the formula of fusing certain ingredients to produce the "drink of happiness". Still almost all the people consider that their ultimate purport in

Happiness is what all human beings/rational beings desire. It is always the end (goal) of our activities, it is an unconditional good.

People travel through life with what seems like a single goal: to be happy. This may seem like a selfish way to live, however this lone objective is the motivation behind nearly all actions. Even seemingly selfless deeds make people feel better about themselves. That warm feeling experienced while doing charitable acts can be described as happiness. But what is authentic happiness? There is an endless possibility of answers to this question, and man seems to be always searching for the solution. Although one may reach his or her goals, there is always still something one strives for in order to be happy. In the book Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert takes the reader through

Many live attempting to decipher the riddle of life. What is life? What is the purpose? What makes? Even though we only seek happiness why can’t we ever seem to achieve it? When we do reach happiness why can’t we seem to grasp it and hold it for more than the few short hours that pass like seconds? The question we must answer first is “What makes happiness, true?”

The purpose of life is to find meaning, not happiness. Discuss with reference to the literary works studies in class.

Happiness is the central purpose of human life and a goal in itself. All action is goal oriented and the goal of every action, is to reach happiness. According to Aristotle, happiness is “living well

Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers of all time created an idea that happiness is the ultimate end goal. This world renowned philosopher argues that exercising a fulfilling life will lead to happiness. Likewise, happiness is said to be the ultimate end goal of all activities in life. Basically, Aristotle portrays every activity as a subordinate to becoming happy. He argues that being self sufficient, and leading a fulfilling life will create happiness through virtue. A virtuous person is noble and possess the ability to rationalize. In order to be noble one must posses the ability to create equilibrium of the soul. That is, staying within the mean. Similar to the mean, Aristotle depicts

It is often said that, “Money can’t buy happiness.” In Cass R. Sunstein’s Yes, Money Can Make You Happy, Sunstein provides a summary and review of Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton’s Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending; he declares that money, when spent wisely and with the right attitude, can provide the most elusive of all human experiences: happiness. In a changing social climate with advances in technology offering unmatched convenience, and a culture in which diverse people with equally diverse sets of values come together, the study of what truly makes us happy is especially relevant now more than ever. While money can certainly be spent in a manner which will create happiness, what Sunstein neglects to address in his writing is that more money does not always equate to more happiness, regardless of how and when it is spent.

Happiness is a result that we deserved, furthermore, it becomes a motivation for us to keep trying and getting success in life.

The texts, “High incomes don’t bring you Happiness” and “You can buy Happiness, if it’s an Experience”, completes the idea that monetary value does not bring true joy. In the passage, “High incomes don’t bring you Happiness”, the author states that bringing in an over excessive amount of money will not make one happy. The author said that an overall income of around $75,000 will complete one’s emotional well being, while anything over that will complete a life evaluation. Life evaluation is the idea that if one was to look at themselves while they’re in their deathbed, how would they rate their lifestyle. This is also supported through different statements within the passage, “You can buy Happiness, if it’s an Experience”. Within this study, it was proven that people enjoyed money, but often spent it on materialistic items which leaves them with a temporary feeling of satisfaction, while when they are given a fully paid trip to the Bahamas, the feeling of peace and joy lasts far longer than when they were to purchase an item of materialistic value. This

The simple question, What makes life worth living? Is a difficult question to answer. The ways that we live our life have rippling effects on others around us, so it is imperative to make correct choices that make life worth living. Everyone in life also has different ideas of what makes life doable through hard difficult times were perseverance is needed, and that’s when we ask ourselves what makes life worth living?, without a doubt waking up every morning, family, and the future make life worth living.

What is the purpose of a human being? “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence” (Nicomachean Ethics). When one thinks about happiness, these words said by Aristotle allow us to understand its significance. Through Aristotle’s teachings, he made it clear that the point of life is to be happy. Aristotle uses the word happiness as having to do with a person’s life as a whole, and not as the constant desire of wanting to experience pleasure (Aristotle’s Ethics). People tend view happiness as an emotion that is not long lasting, while it is really about accumulating the good experienced an entire lifetime. To Aristotle, happiness is about flourishing, virtues, focusing on our well-being, and self-sufficiency.

What qualities make our life worth value? This question usually arises in any discussion regarding animal ethics. It is impossible to answer this question, however, because no one other then God will definitively even know the exact qualities that make our lives valuable. All we can do is guess what parts of us give us higher value over other creatures that inhabit our planet. So we let our perceptions and pre-conceived notions about animals dictate how we treat them. Everyone consciously or subconsciously ranks living creatures and attributes value to them. The way we often do this is we set ourselves as a benchmark. Then we compare ourselves to them and look for similarities. The more similar they are to us the more value the must have. Right? The flaw in this philosophy other than the fact that we have other than we having no clue if this is a correct way to assess a living being’s value is that as we learn more about animals and other living creatures, we learn that our previous connived notions about them are in fact untrue. We commonly call people unintelligent pigs even though we now know that pigs are smarter than dogs. We have made the bald eagle our countries national bird because we assumed that something so majestic must be honorable denizen of the sky when bald eagles are in actuality scavengers and bullies. We are scared to swim in the ocean due to our fear of sharks when cows kill more people annually. These preconceived notions have allowed us to bypass

A question many people ask themselves, is how can they reach a happy life. Is it as simple as seeking pleasure and avoiding pain? If that were the case then all people who can go about their lives without fear of missing a meal or dying from the elements should be happy then right? Wrong. For years, all people, of all ages, and cultures, ultimately seek one thing, to be happy. To have satisfaction is to have all of your basic needs and desires met, but to be happy is something else entirely. This something else, is very hard to put our finger on and describe explicitly. What it means for us as humans to be happy here on earth, is to live a life for God and as faithfully to his wishes as possible. This means that in order to achieve the maximum happiness possible on earth, we must faithfully live just lives for God, in the hopes that one day we will achieve wholehearted happiness when we arrive at the pearly gates.