What is the meaning of life? What is our time on this earth good for? How can we spend our lives so that, as we reach the end, we each can say "Mine was a life well spent?"
I make no pretensions to certain knowledge, but I am willing to offer up one version of what the good life might consist of. To put it bluntly, the good life is a life spent in pursuit of the beautiful.
What do I mean by beauty? I base my definition on a statement of Kant's. According to him, it is only possible to judge a thing beautiful if we obtain pleasure from experiencing it. I go one step further and claim that that which is beautiful is exactly that which gives us pleasure from experiencing it. It is not only a physical object, (and certainly not only a human being,) that can be beautiful. Scientific ideas can be beautiful, noble sentiments too, finely written books, even. When we smile at the end of a good film or a stirring book, it is because we have found something beautiful about it. It may be the finely convoluted storyline, or the depth of emotion conveyed, but no matter. It is still beauty of a sort which we have found.
It is appropriate here to make a disclaimer. The ideas outlined above do not have their origin with this writer, fine thing though that might have been. Mishima Yukio, author of "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion," and "Confessions of a Mask," amongst other works, tried to live his life by aesthetic principles. Even further back in time, the movement called aestheticism, which flourished in turn of century France and England, was based on the idea that beauty, pursued independently of any other considerations, was the highest good. It is the aestheticists we have to thank for the phrase "art for art's sake." The very image of the starving artist or composer, sacrificing all for the sake of his art, is based to a great extent, at least implicitly, on the aestheticist ideal.
The objection might be made that this is not a practical way to go about life, that there are more pressing needs that one must first attend to, and I would give my qualified agreement. It is not for all of us to sacrifice physical comforts for the sake of the beautiful. We can't all be starving artists or revolutionaries. Tending to our material well-being is perfectly all right, as long as that is not all we do. But while man must work to eat, some men eat only so that they might work, and this I cannot agree with. We are only alive for a while, and all our achievements, given enough time, will fade into oblivion. Even the deeds of the Caesers will someday be forgotten. How much more transient are most of our own works! And yet, so many of us are willing to dismiss all thought of pursuing the things we find beautiful, in the name of furthering our ambitions.
The driving force behind this relegation of beauty to the bottom of our priority lists is the idea that happiness is a goal to be arrived at, and not a process in itself. We often let ourselves get caught up in thinking that once we have our jobs as high-flying investment bankers, or once we have recieved our medical degrees, or even once we have fully paid for our homes and seen our children through, then we will have arrived at that goal called "Happiness." We will have reached "Happiness," and it will make all manner of privations we endure along the way worth it.
Many of us, at least unconsciously, live by such a philosophy, and yet on paper it looks just a little absurd, doesn't it? Most of us know, at least at the rational level, that achieving our material goals will not suddenly leave us in a state of permanent, blissful contentment. Then why is it that we find it so guilt-inducing to spare time for such simple things in life as taking in the beauty of Hanover in fall, all by ourselves? It is not for me to advocate spending all one's precious time looking at maple leaves, but even a half-hour in the day would be something.
As I have already said, beauty comes in many guises, and it is not even necessary to enjoy the sight of a New England fall to be devoted to the beuatiful. It may be that one is struck by the play of light and space in architecture or the ability of the moving image to affect emotions and beliefs. It may be that one is captivated by the sounds of an unfamiliar language, and then embarks on a life-long romance with that language. It may simply be that one falls for the fascinations of the human condition, with all its joys and privations. All these things are beautiful, and one can only stand to lose if one is unwilling to make time for them. Answering "later, later" will not do, for later might well be too late.
