What Does a Good Life Look Like?

We are trained to believe that we get to live a good life after we retire.

But why do we need to wait?

Shouldn’t we figure out what a good life means to us then follow that path our entire life rather than wait to the very end to pursue it?

Doing that would give our entire life personal meaning.

We need to ask ourselves, “What does a good life look like?” early in life.

It sounds simple until you try to answer it honestly.

To answer this question we need to understand the inherited answers. 

This typically revolves around having a good job, a house, and a family. We need to get debt and pay it back which allows us to live in comfort. Throw in a few holidays in between endless work, save for retirement, and then you get to use your life for you.

None of these things are bad if that is truly your answer to the question.

Security matters. Work matters. Having a home matters. Providing for those you love matters. This is not about saying that the normal answers are meaningless or bad because they aren’t. Much of life comes down to ordinary duties, and there is dignity in carrying them well.

But are these things the same as a good life?

They certainly are part of having one. I have spent much of my life raising children, caring for ageing parents, working, and paying bills. I believe those things are part of my good life.

But, is that the whole answer for you?

You can have a good career and still feel empty.You can own a house and still feel trapped.You can be admired and still feel unknown.You can be comfortable and still feel as if something important has been left unlived.

Perhaps we need to step back and review what we are doing compared to what a good life means for you.

Thoreau wrote about deliberate living. He explored this thought by going into the woods to allow time and space to strip back his life and discover what is necessary. He suggested that we need less than we believe, that living matters more than stuff, and that our inner life matters now, not only later.

I’m not saying we all need to disappear into the woods to learn this lesson. But we can still learn from those who stepped away long enough to see life differently and apply them to our life.

A good life is about what we are doing because we chose it.

And questioning what we are doing because of the script we have been given before we were allowed to question it.

Rebecca Solnit wrote about walking as a way of thinking, noticing, and being present in the world.

Walking slows things down.
It changes the space of our thinking.
It allows the world to appear before our eyes, and gives us time to take it in.

When you walk, you notice what speed hides. Not just from your eyes, but from your mind.

A tree root lifting the concrete up.
A closed shop. A bird on a power line.
A thought you finally have time to process.

Walking doesn’t solve everything. It doesn’t pay the rent, fix society, or magically answer the question of life.

But it does something important… It interrupts the rush.

And maybe that is where the answer to what a good life begins to happen. Not with escape or having the perfect plan. But with attention to self.

Attention to what we are doing.Attention to what we are trading away for our time.Attention to what we keep postponing.Attention to who benefits from our busyness.Attention to that small voice inside us all that says, “This can’t be all there is.”

I’m 58 years old. I am asking this question again because life changes over time. What matters to me in my twenties isn’t the same as today. I am reinventing myself after decades of work, years of caring for ageing parents, and years of homeschooling my children.

I am asking this question. The good life question is not exclusive to being young, the lucky, or the rich.

It is something we can begin asking about from wherever we are.

For me, this question is not just about me. It is about my children. I want them to examine their life constantly. To not confuse employment with purpose, consumption with happiness, or obedience with goodness.

I want them to understand that a good life is not handed to them via schooling, employers, governments, banks, algorithms, or by frightened adults.

It comes from taking notice, questioning everything, that it is chosen by them.

It doesn’t mean it has to be dramatic. A good life can mean work, staying in one place, caring for family, paying bills and doing ordinary things.

So long as that is what they chose to do.

It is about living a conscious life.

A life where work serves something deeper than survival.A life where money is useful but not sacred.A life where children are not trained to fit into the machine.

A life where we are allowed to ask whether the path in front of us is actually ours.

So… what does a good life look like?

I don’t know your answer.

But I think it is worth asking before the script writes the rest of our lives for us.