Define “Actually Enjoy Life”
I received split feedback about the recent post titled A Middle Finger to Our Future Selves. Specifically, it was about the following excerpt:
"...the idea that we don't know whether we'll even be alive when we're older, so we might as well "enjoy life" while we're young. And by "enjoy life," he meant spend, spend, spend. He hated the idea of saving, or heaven forbid, investing. If he had it, he was going to blow it on something fun."
One blog reader replied to this post and said the following: "Your friend is right you know. We should actually enjoy life while we're young and healthy."
I think this comment gets to the heart of a really important decision. How do we define "actually enjoy life"? The friend in my previous post, this blog reader, and countless others tend to define "actually enjoy life" as some combination of spending money on wants and not working. Those seem to be our two cultural measuring sticks of "actually enjoying life."
What if enjoying life is so much more than how much we can spend and how little we can work? I tend to look at life through the lens of meaning. Am I living my most meaningful life? If the answer is yes, then there's a strong probability that I'm "actually enjoying life." If the answer is no, then I may have some issues. But how much money I can spend on wants is not a real driver in that discussion.
This is why contentment is so important. If we define our enjoyment by how much money we can spend on wants, then our ability to enjoy life is essentially capped by our income and resources. If we have many resources, we can be happy. If we don't, we can't. That's a really depressing proposition. Fortunately, it's a lie.
Contentment, on the other hand, disconnects the two altogether. The people I know who are the most content live tremendously enjoyable lives despite having limited resources. They don't allow stuff and leisure to define happiness. This disconnect in definitions is also one of the reasons there are so many people unhappy, fantasizing about retirement, while others are still working in their 70s, happy as a clam. This group of positive and optimistic people aren't defining themselves by how much they can spend or how little they can work. They are merely soaking up every bit of meaning they can find in this life.
Yes, we should "actually enjoy life." Amen to that! However, I don't think it's as simple as deciding to spend as much money on wants as possible. Instead, I believe it comes from pursuing meaning each and every day. Meaning in our home life. Meaning in our work life. Meaning in our generosity. Meaning.....period. The rest will sort itself out.
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