being a good_ life • gary e. davis • berkeley


gedavis.com	aspects of being well	The Project

	being a good_ life gary e. davis	February 2019

The ‘_’ above is deliberate. I’m implicitly working with a manifold sense of good-
ness (good*) which is convenient to distinguish by good_ (good life), goodG (good society), and goodH (oriented by interest in the commonwealth of humanity).
I mentioned this earlier. How best to understand an intimacy of life, society, and humanity is an integrally open venture of situational prospecting.

Attaining then sustaining a healthy life—thriving—is a mountainous achievement for many persons, worth admiring as endeavor and accomplishment.

Though a relatively high degree of individuation is required for such attaining and sustaining, it’s not yet a focus on actualizing one’s potential for selfidentical happi-
s ness (which is not yet about wholly flourishing, but is more than just living a long time in medically good health).

For example, reasonable optimism is very desirable for happy aging, though as complex as one may welcome.

Gaining a good degree of appreciability is desirable, though maybe not yet loving to find high/deep significance in surface meaning—or easily granting deep/high significance to others’ expressive presence, especially as admiration for their potential. (Certainties of teen idealism keep me young.)

Undauntable sense of humor! The world is uncanny or absurd (“the”?) because—well, that’s a long story, isn’t it.

Manifold project-ive engagement is ideally allegorical of one’s whole-life orien-
tation—that A-Project-ivity I mentioned. Telic cohering of project-ive desire mirrors a fullness of Self in Time that maybe will live to age 110 (while aspirations of human enhancement dreamers hope to normalize 150 by mid-century—and how will you enjoy so much time fruitfully?).

Anyway, guidance by idealism calls for keeping ideals vital.

Day to day, building a life (relationship, marriage, family...) requires the pro-
tracted (project-ive) focus that turns horizonal desire into regularly fulfilling affect—that organized flourishing I mentioned (but could—will—detail at much length later).

Imaginativeness and hope partner with ordinary realism to make life a bunch
of dramas in the theater of aging well.

There are falls and setbacks. OK: Stand again, move on. Make a past vow of commitment to future promise, from which one’s fallen, retrieved in renewed avowal of commitment to lasting fulfillment.

Be in charge of being well. “Mind over body,” they say.

Trust in the efficacy of little things done to better the day, trusting in their contribution to the emergence of worthwhile long-term engagement. Belong to trust in the destining of that.

Emergence of a better world is a pointillism of better engagements by good lives. Enjoying witness to Our humanity improving makes a happy horizon for one’s little contributions. But it’s like voting, you know: Good government requires showing up to make your point in the landscape that has no other way to be well.

Anyway, persons devoted to being well tend to have superior lives, re: health—> happiness—> longevity. The data is persuasive, given that one loves protracted, project-ive engagement.

next—> conceptual aspects of being