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  What Is A Good Life Lived? *Does it matter? *Is it important? *Is our mortality all about our immortality? *Will anybody really care? *Is this cause itself alone one worthy of an entire life? This could be a very deep, protracted essay. It could be a sermon. It could be a study series. It could be a serial internal reflection. It's not. It's a question. It's an important question that I think every reasonable person should think about--often. I will immediately admit this is not an original thought, unique unto myself. It is a question everyone struggles with from time to time. Some struggle with it more than others, for longer than some. It is a question said to have caused the death of artist Vincent Van Gogh, who asked: "What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" I don't know if you've really given this question serious thought. I know I have, and I do. My history has required it of me countless times, at the bedside of a dying patient, or later as I was officiating at their funerals. I've pondered it as I have seen the madness that mankind perpetrates upon itself regularly. But, I must be specific here. I am not asking if life is worth living. Nor am I asking if there are bad people in the world. It is, and there are people who do bad things. I have finally submitted to the protestations of my peers and colleagues who have screamed into my soul for years that there really are bad people. As an idealogue and "hope addict", I have always contended that there are no bad people, just good people who do bad things. Experience in life has fought me at every turn on this one. The proof is just too apparent, too obvious and too concrete. There are bad people in this world. I mean seriously bad people. As I might wish otherwise, this isn't about those peopler. The very narrow focus of this question is: "What is a good life lived?" Socrates said that the "unexamined life is not worth living." Of course, for a pedagogue this would be justification for life itself. I am and have been a pedagogue for more than 45 years. I have always been a "Why?" guy. Looking 360 degrees around any question, I have always sought to arrive at the very best possible answer. That can sometimes be very difficult. Some questions can take decades, or even a lifetime to answer. As much as it pains me to say, there are some questions that simply require more than one lifetime to understand well enough to answer sufficiently. I was asked recently "Who created sin?" It's a relatively easy answer, unless you are truly seeking to understand the question. If you ARE seeking to understand the question, the journey can take you to some horrible places that mere mortals should not go. It was not God who created sin. It was the Creation of God (mankind) who created sin. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Take just one more baby step, and you are into the argument of the ages. Finding your way through the miazma of the goop that must be travelled to finally arrive at an acceptable, understandable answer is a journey for only the bravest heart. The questioner had such a heart, and the challenge was on. Sydney J. Harris once said that "When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?" I liked Harris' work, and was a regular reader of it. He was an interesting man, who lived a very interesting life, I think. Of course, anyone who can top the Nixon Permanent Enemies List is someone I would at least listen to. No, not because it was Nixon! It was because he had such a list as this, and Sydney J. Harris topped it. Here is one of his more famous quotes that more directly applies to this question: "Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." This statement was one I first read in 1960, in Harris' regularly posted column in the Chicago Tribune. I cut it out, and put it in my Bible. I was five years old. I ran across it the other day, and I had to just stop and reflect. I have been many things, and done many things in this life. Most of the things I have put my passion into, I have done relatively well. Those things I did for the doing, I didn't do so well. So, it would seem to me that a good life, well lived, must involve (to at least some reasonable degree) passion. But does that include the passion to do bad things? Not if the passion driving the action is to do good things. I've never had to worry about having passion for doing good things. I've always had it, from the first moment of my memory. I have always wanted to be "a good boy", even into my mature adulthood. I've done many, many bad things as it turns out. I just never did them with passion, or with purposeful intent. We have all wondered if we could get away with the perfect crime. Some of us have actually attempted it. I don't know anyone who got away with a perfect crime. Is that a circular argument? Isn't the definition of a perfect crime one in which the perpetrator is not caught and held to account? Or is it one in which the perpetrator has no remorse? Does life itself equal its purpose? Is there more to life than living it? Well, there are a lot of different schools of thought on that. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that "I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirm the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it." I've known a lot of people who have lived their lives believing that--until the end of their life was near them. Then, most of those same people suddenly become devout devotees of Elizabet Kubler Ross, who is famous for having said "It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth -- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up -- that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had." I have never met, in my life, a true Atheist. I don't think I ever will. It seems to be part of our fabric, that indescribable "who we are" that makes it impossible to "know there is no God". The worst among us hope that there IS a God with just enough forgiveness for them. Yet, their entire lives are lived in defiance of that forgiveness--until the end of life is upon them. St. Francis of Assissi was 56 years old when he was converted to faith. John Newton, one of the foremost evangelists and writers of hymns the world has ever known was a slave ship captain and owner. Can good people do bad things? Yes, and we do. Can bad people do good things? Of course. But, at the end of the life we have been given to live, how do we stand? How do we stack up? It is not the judgment (ours or others) of whether or not we were "good" that truly matters. But the quality of the life we lived is worthy of an evaluation. The more brutally honest our introspection (I believe) the more possible it is to alter our remaining steps. There is no doubt that, for many people one bad act is enough to condemn a life. "Just one murder, and they make a monster out of you!" was a statement made to me by a convict on death row. (He must have been pushing the envelope. He had eight of them to his credit). I used to find comfort in the words of William Wordsworth, who said: "The best portion of a good man's life - his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love." Today, I find myself asking if that's really true. Doesn't it require someone to remain behind who remembers them? Is that what all the plaques are for? Is that why we make headstones for graves? The acts usually are not listed, but I've seen buildings named after people, and plaques on marble walls from a forgotten generation. If the acts were that good, does it really take a memorial slab of rock to recall them? I just don't have too many people around that remember enough of my life to trust that statement any more. I wake up every morning with the same thought in my mind: "Lord, today let me do no harm, cause no pain, and birth no grief." I really do not know if that is sufficient to answer this question. I guess I just hope it's good enough. I'll find out in a little while. I wish I could know now, because today I have a day to make things better. I don't know about any tomorrows. Neither do you. I choose to live today as a good person doing those good things I can, and purposely doing none of the bad things I could do. Tomorrow, I'll try again. I hope you will make that choice, too. What have you got to lose? What have you got to gain? In the words of a life-long mentor and friend (and boss for a while) Clement Stone: "If you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by all means try!"
© Copyright 2010 Budroe is Blessed! (UN: kybudman at Writing.Com).
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