I have a fourteen-year-old sister and today, just for fun, I asked her what life is. She couldn't conjure up an answer right away, but after thinking about the question for a while, she said that for her, at least, life is about taking care of family and her friends. A little too philanthropic, I thought, but it is a viable philosophy that she learned on her own, most likely from our philanthropic parents. This very question is not asked by many people on a daily basis. So what is life? And how do most people define life as?
I am a fan of Kurzgesagt, a Youtube content provider that answers these cryptic questions "in a Nutshell." They have an awesome video that explains what life is and I got to question myself the same exact question.
Quite a while back, I learned in a philosophy class at UCLA that Eudaimonia, a life striving for "happiness" is the best life per Aristotle. His logic was that life for money or prestige has no means to an end.
For instance, you want money to buy other things which defeat the purpose of living for money - in other words, life for money is not really for the money, it is for other goods and services that you can enjoy by using the money.
Prestige is similar in that you work for prestige (or power) in order to wield power or impact the government, society, or the world. Again having power has no means to an end.
Happiness, on the other hand, has an end in itself. If you strive to live for happiness, you are working for an end cause. Happiness has an end in itself because you want to be happy to be happy (mind-blown). And this is called Eudaimonia. Aristotle wrote about it to teach his students to live for what truly matters.
( This is our Dog, Coby :) )
But what is life?
Life to me is something more grandeur. It is hard to grasp in our minds because our society and media paved its way to the very core of our lives forcing us to survive by working hard. Since this is the case for now, life to me is to leave a legacy. And by that, I mean provide our future generation with circumstances, culture, and understandings to live a life of Eudaimonia.
Life is unending in a sense. Every living being dies eventually but we are given the time and resources to spend our time in whichever way we want. We are given the freedom to choose which life fits best for us. Of course, our lives are steered by our parents, but most of the choices are made by us.
So what is life? It is about making the right choices and leaving that onto our children for many more generations to come. The earth is still young. There are millions of unanswered questions and there are technological and biological advancements yet to be discovered by us. We are given the time and resources to do whatever we want. Make the right choices, leave a legacy. That's what life is.
Link to the Kurzgesagt video on Life!