December prompt from notasupervillain
notasupervillain asked 'What does it mean to live a Good Life?'
I must say this rather put me in mind of the probably apocryphal London cabbie who had that there Bertrand Russell (I suspect this has versions featuring assorted Philosophers or Intellectuals Famed in the Public Eye) in the back of his taxi once and asked him, 'Well, what's it all about, then?' and 'do you know, he couldn't answer?'
I think that perhaps it's a bit problematic to set out to live A Good Life, because there are so many ways in which that can be measured. It's one of those macro-mega-goals that can be a bit paralysing unless it's taken one step or so at a time.
I suppose I always tend to return to the concluding paragraphs of Middlemarch as a reasonable thing to hope for: Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Not a perfect life but one of which one need not be ashamed. And as Eliot reminds us, we make our individual lives 'amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state'. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2859045.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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