Quality of Life
What is Life?
Unless we know what life is, we cannot approach its
quality. Therefore, we must first answer life's question.
What is the Question?
When all is silent, there are only two questions,
which essentially is only one:
"What is the meaning of life?", and "What is the meaning of suffering?". If
you answer one, you have answered the other.
What is the Answer?
There are probably as many answers as there are
people.
However, there are two main streams:
1. Those who are in search of "Happiness".
2. Those who are in search of "Self-Actualization".
Happiness
If happiness is the goal of life, then suffering is its hell.
For hedonists, happiness determines the quality of life, since happiness is the
need to be fulfilled, and the quality the ability to fulfill that need.
Hedonism, can only make us happy for some time, but it always must give away
to suffering, since fulfillment is not sustainable in a changing world.
Therefore, you will find yourself forever redefining "happiness", as it will
follow our needs as they change throughout our lifetime. It is this fallacy that
makes us aim for prosperity, money, and greed to fulfill our perceived need for
happiness.
Self Actualization
Shakespeare, through Hamlet, posed the question as:
"To be or not to be" rather than "To become or not to become". This means that
we do not have to become something else, as we already are what we need to be.
The old Greeks posed the question as: "Know thyself", which translates into
"Who are you?". It is our task to find out who we really are.
In a more modern version of the ancient sages: "Are we physical beings trying
to get spiritual experience, or are we spirits trying to get physical
experience?"
Funny enough, we attain happiness as a by-product of finding ourselves, not
by looking for it.
Definition of the Quality of Life
The Quality of Life is the totality
of features and characteristics of the varying environments and changing
conditions/circumstances that bear on their ability to satisfy the human needs
for actualization at four levels of awareness:
- Physical
- Emotional
- Mental
- Spiritual