Making a Happy Life

I think the final semester of college is difficult for everyone who experiences. It is not just a hard year because of academic but this final semester poses some difficult decisions to future graduate. I am in this situation right now and have found that I am not the only one facing a quarter- life crisis. This is a time when I am expected to be prepared for an adult life thanks to the training I have received in school. My classes in Middle Eastern politics, however didn't prepare me for the kind of questions I find myself trying to answer. Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? How am i going to feed myself? What makes me happy? What do I need to do to be a good person in this world? Who do I want to spend my life with? How do I want to spend my life? With all of these questions piling up and the pressure mounting, it is easy for me to loose sight of my happiness and give in to the insecurity. After a particularly overwhelming day today, I was surprised to find Aristotle addressing the subject of happiness in tonight's reading. Aristotle argues that we take actions and that these actions must be caused by something and that this cause of all actions is the chief good. Thus if all of our actions are driven by the good, and living well and doing well brings happiness, the chief good must be happiness. Aristotle argues that while different people will argue different definitions of happiness but all argue that living well results in being happy. With this established, Aristotle defines happiness as being self- sufficient because it "makes life desirable and lacking in nothing." In other words, because happiness is enough to make life desirable for an individual, it is the final and most essential good.

These are the two points that made the deepest impression on me: 1) happiness is living a good and virtuous life and 2) that happiness in itself was sufficient to sustain life. In this way Aristotle reminds me of my mom. She has always said you have to make yourself happy, it won't just happen. Aristotle doesn't think someone is just born happy but rather happiness requires determination to live in a certain and once this is achieved, happiness will sustain the individual throughout life. Maybe this is why college students about to graduate feel so much pressure. We are know responsible for our own lives and consequently making our own happiness. Happiness, therefore, is not a gift or a happenstance, but rather a consequence of individual actions. Aristotle's argument makes the individual responsible for his or her own happiness and therefore empowers the individual.

Virtue and the Flourishing Life

Contemplating Plato’s account of virtue, I wondered whether it would be more virtuous to overcome desire, or to simply not have the desire at all. We all consider the man who has overcome desire more admirable than the man without desire. In fact, most would even find the man without desire blander than the other. Is this the way it should be though? If the latter person is indeed more virtuous, is he not more laudable?

This all builds up to my biweekly meeting with my spiritual director: he is what I consider to be one of the wisest people on Loyola’s campus, and a man of exceedingly great virtue, not just in my opinion, but from anyone who I have met that knows him well. He is a man of little desire. There is no desire to overcome. I, on the other hand, come in to him and talk about how hard it can sometimes be making the best decision. Who is more laudable? It is my opinion that He is, but what I find is that he is content with or without the praise.

Perhaps we praise those who actually deliberate because they are the ones that need the praise. An already virtuous person does not need to be reminded that the decisions made are virtuous. On the other hand, the person striving towards virtue does need to be reminded that the virtuous decision is good, because the goods from that decision are not immediately recognized. A happy life, not in the modern sense, but in the sense that it a flourishing lifestyle, does not arise immediately from our decision. It arises from the continual striving for the flourishing life.