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Archana Law sight-reads the score of the symphony of life

How many times have you heard this old adage: ‘The important thing is not how many years there are in your life but how much life is in your years?’ It can be easy to run through the maze of life without pausing to think about its meaning.

At an alumni meeting, members remembered how as teenagers they contemplated the future; and how badly they wanted to grow up, drive, be popular in high school, go to college, find an amazing job, and buy a huge house and nice cars… and have an extremely handsome husband!

But the older they grew, the more they began realising the value of happiness, adventure and creating memories; rather than the value of temporary popularity, material items and physical appearance.

Attending a memorial service around the same time gave me ample opportunity to reflect on the essential components of a life well lived compared to those that remained anaemic.

What constitutes a well lived life is a question that’s probably been asked since time immemorial; it is one that everyone has considered at some point.

Is each of us the measure of all things (as Plato claimed about 2,500 years ago)? And is each person’s determination of a life well lived right for him and him alone? Or might we come up with an answer that’s applicable to us all?

Simply being alive isn’t sufficient for a life well lived – we wouldn’t say that a comatose patient is living a good life. So then does a life well lived mean growing into adulthood, having a spouse, raising children, and sustaining oneself and one’s family?

While there’s virtue in providing for oneself and one’s family, is that all there is to life? Or is the determination of a life well lived measured by the accumulation of wealth and one’s bank balance?

Does the person who has amassed Rs. 2 billion live life twice as well as one who has accumulated only a billion rupees but only half as well as the person who has accumulated Rs. 4 billion?

Here too we know intuitively that a life with material comforts doesn’t necessarily translate into a life well lived. To say that a life is well lived is to say there’s a particular way of living – one that is better than other ways of living and that we should strive to achieve this way of life.

The measure of our lives is the sum of our actions; and the good of our lives is measured by the sum of our deeds! Here are four perspectives.

THREE PARTS A life well lived must be good for the person living that life. But the answer to what particular way of life is better than others lies in the fact that it should be beneficial to society and good for humankind.

A life well lived requires a moral component (the ability to understand the difference between good and bad), an ethical component (understanding that while some behaviour is acceptable, others may not be) and an interactive component (the understanding that life is given meaning through relationships with others).

A life that is lacking in any one of these components can’t be a life well lived.

TAKE A CHANCE It’s said that when Jeff Bezos launched Amazon with US$ 300,000 of his parents’ money, he gave himself a 70 percent chance of failing – a ‘regret minimisation framework’ to solidify his decision to start a business.

In other words, Bezos asked himself how he might feel at 85 when he reflected on his decision. Would he have more regrets if he tried building an internet company and failed? Or would he feel worse if he never tried?

He decided on the latter, took a gamble and the rest is history.

FUTURE SELF As Harvard trained psychiatrist and entrepreneur Daniel Goodman suggests, “asking yourself to consider what your future self might be thinking is a powerful perspective taking technique that can help identify what matters most to you.”

Though difficult, this process can be valuable. If we’re crystal clear about what we strive for in our personal and professional lives, we’ll be more likely to achieve what we want.

TOMBSTONE NOTE As a coach, I sometimes use a similar technique to push clients out of their comfort zones and make decisions by using a (morbidly termed) ‘tombstone exercise.’

Clients have to write an imaginary epitaph that describes how they want to be remembered and what they hope to achieve at the time of their death. Next, they write what their tombstone might say if their life ended that day. Though creepy, this powerful exercise helps clients develop a perspective and vision regarding vital life goals.

“God gave us the gift of life and it’s up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well,” said Voltaire. All of us have the gift of life. The question is how to use that gift. Yet, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us, unplayed.”