What does it mean to have a good life?

As I was reading “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry”, where the main character is a senior man, I slightly started to overthink life being named good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, happy or miserable.

Well, what are these terms, why do we use them and what for?

If your life is bad, then what do you do with this result?

Is it necessary to claim that your life is bad?

Does it sound good to live 80 years of shitty and miserable life, and get super rich/successful/famous when you are 81, then live 9 good years and die? Can you call this life good then? Or would you have lived a better life if you had an average career till you were 80, and then you retired and started living miserably for like 10 years till you died? Or are both options good/bad?

How do you claim that your life was good? Is there a way to make sure that you don’t lie to yourself because you don’t want to acknowledge that you screwed up?

Let me articulate some of my thoughts on this topic.

I am 17 and I am definitely unbiased in evaluating whether my life is good/bad, since I barely lived independently. Nevertheless, I feel like we can evaluate good/bad periods of our lives no matter how old or young we are.

There is no point in claiming a status for your whole life. Like come on, even our cells change every couple of years, physically you are not completely the person you were 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Should you evaluate your life based on situations, an old version of you was in?

Should you evaluate it at all??

I guess I am so afraid of finding out at the end of my life that it was not as great as it could be, seeing mistakes being made.

There is definitely a reason why people tend to claim their life as good/bad/average, and I am curious to know it, but at the same time, a bit nervous that I’ll see there that I can’t control the way my life turns out to be.

I feel like it’s easier to say that it’s wrong and unethical to claim one adjective to your life, to look at it as though it’s black and white.

I’ll definitely research this field more and share it with you if there is something interesting.

It would be so helpful to hear your thoughts on this topic as well, feel free to give me some advice in the comments section.

Obviously, I am not a guru, that knows all the answers, but rather a traveller, that is looking for some food for thoughts.

With love and respect,

Daria.