Sublime

How can we live the good life? One enlivened by joy and community and meaning, that brings us a sense of worth and belonging and strengthens the people and natural environments

To be human is to be animated and oriented by some vision of the good life, some picture of what we think counts as “flourishing.” And we want that. We crave it. We desire it. This is why our most fundamental mode of orientation to the world is love.

We will have liberated ourselves from the madness of the age when we can look on loud and heroic lives—perhaps led by people we once knew—and with good faith say that this is not for us, that we are happier where we are, because we at last understand what we really require to survive mentally: cosiness, connection, and an ongoing lack of drama.

Bill O’Brien used to define happiness as “the general sense that your life is headed in the right direction and that you have the opportunity to make a difference.” I have always thought of it as one of those odd qualities we value but cannot achieve by direct effort. Have you ever known anyone working to be happy? In my experience such people have

Think of the days on which you have nothing to look forward to but sleep: a respite from childcare, putting out fires at work, fighting to keep your relationships alive. Don’t get me wrong, these things all matter. Their value may be final; but it is essentially ameliorative. Caught on the treadmill of what has to be done, day by day, you may not h

As Adam Smith argued, the causes don’t lie in some personal error we’re making. It’s a limitation forced upon us by the greater logic of a competitive market economy. But we can allow ourselves to mourn that there will always be large aspects of our character that won’t be satisfied. We’re not being silly or ungrateful. We’re simply registering the