Poll: What does it actually mean to live a good life these days?

In the second round, the top spot went to the answer provided by Red Bull, and now they’ve come up with a fresh question for us:

Red Bull said:What does it actually mean to live a good life in this day and age, given how increasingly complex the challenges, trials, and tribulations have become—do you even strive for that, and what are some of the main obstacles standing in your way?

The thread is open for entries until Friday, June 25th, 2021, at 7:00 PM!

Each forum member can submit just one entry per round, using only one profile per person.
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The whole debate about what makes a life "good" was basically Plato's bread and butter, which is why we’re still obsessing over it today. I guess my take is pretty old-school too: living well means acting out of what you actually know through love, and then learning more by actually doing things. To me, that means there are a few big ways people mess it up. Either you just stop caring and fall into a pit of negativity; or, you aren't even thinking for yourself and just blindly follow whatever traditions or social norms are floating around; or—and this one happens a lot—you get stuck in pure intellectual curiosity where you learn stuff but never actually let it change how you live.

Strive to ensure each day presents you with a meaningful challenge, yet one that remains within the realm of manageable effort.

Humans are social creatures by design, so it’s just common sense to live like it. Basically, don't go around doing things to other people that you wouldn't want them doing to you.

Lost in translation

Peter Russell

There’s an old story about some Sultan’s court involving a very specific official whose entire title was essentially "Yes-Man." His one and only job? To nod his head in total agreement at everything the Sultan uttered. (Ernest Hemingway, *Roadside Signs*)
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Life? Success? Obstacles? Honestly, it all feels incredibly pretentious and massively overrated to me. I can't help but think that we’re all just acting like those "Yes-Men," constantly nodding along because we're too terrified of a little friction. We just want to avoid the sting. But let's be real: pain is what makes life actually matter. It’s the passion, the raw physical sensations, the deep emotions—but above all else, it’s the pain. That’s how I choose to live my life; I dive into it with far too much passion, even when it hurts. I refuse to just sit here and nod my head through it all..

Living a good life really just boils down to being at peace with yourself—both internally and with how you spend your days—regardless of what kind of chaos you're feeling on the surface.
Doesn't matter what era you're living in; that's just a universal truth.

A truly good life is one defined by the capacity to love and be loved in return; however, the absolute best kind of life—the one that actually matters—is the one where we are cherished even after we're gone, through the legacy we leave behind for the world... whether that's in this modern era or any other age.

I'm just quoting someone else here—not my own brilliance, obviously—but it's how I see things..
Know thyself.
That’s the baseline if you actually want a life that isn't totally meaningless.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy using Reddit

To me, living a good life boils down to a simple equation: loving yourself while showing some decent respect to everyone else. It’s about wandering through the world with your eyes wide open, soaking up every weird and wonderful thing you can find, trying everything once, and constantly oscillating between being the student and the teacher. Isn't that the whole point? I'd like to think we can stumble into old age a bit wiser than when we started, but more importantly, actually proud of the life we lived. I want to reach that stage where I have a massive collection of genuine, heartfelt, and beautiful stories to tell—stories that might just serve as a little compass or a spark of inspiration for some kid out there who hasn't seen much of the world yet.

Living a truly good life means letting go of all that unnecessary baggage—and I mean that in every sense of the word! But seriously, it really boils down to not dwelling on what could have been different, because honestly, beating yourself up over the past is just a waste of energy. It’s just as pointless to obsess over what *might* happen tomorrow, since that only serves to clutter your mind and crank up your stress levels. At the end of the day, it's all about just being present and living for the moment.

It means living in harmony with the natural world. ☕

Jonathan Brooks8 said:A truly good life is one defined by the capacity to love and be loved in return; however, the absolute best kind of life—the one that actually matters—is the one where we are cherished even after we're gone, through the legacy we leave behind for the world... whether that's in this modern era or any other age.

Kindness always comes back to you. If you don't believe me, just try it.

🙂

If you look at life as just this massive bundle of potential and skill, then living well really means leveling up those abilities—expanding what you can do and discovering what you didn't know was there. To me, that boils down to two things: a) staying genuinely open to the world—and to yourself as part of it—and b) having a serious amount of curiosity.

I’m pretty much all in on that way of looking at things... though I do have some ethical hang-ups regarding how that plays out in practice.

The real kicker, though, is that what modern American society expects from us is basically the polar opposite of this kind of meaningful existence.

Living a decent life these days feels like a constant act of guerrilla warfare against the corporate wolves running this country.

Living a good life really comes down to following virtues. Or at least some of them, anyway. It’s not like we’re running low on them; it’s more about how much we actually live by them.

Here’s a great quote from Amanda Flores88. I love the way she put this.

"They're everywhere. All around us and inside us. Virtues aren't missing; you just have to learn how to see them."

Gerald Jackson48 said:Living a good life really comes down to following virtues. Or at least some of them, anyway. It’s not like we’re running low on them; it’s more about how much we actually live by them.

Here’s a great quote from Amanda Flores88. I love the way she put this.

"They're everywhere. All around us and inside us. Virtues aren't missing; you just have to learn how to see them."

To me, living a good life means having the freedom to live on your own terms and the backbone to tell someone to go to hell if they don't fit your world. 😁

Look, we’re stepping into murky waters here because "goodness" isn't some universal constant we can all just agree on.
Sure, trying to stick to certain cultural rules helps keep things civil, but those rules don't tell you much about what's actually happening deep down in someone's psyche—whether it's conscious or that weird, intuitive stuff bubbling under the surface.
There’s such a massive spectrum when it comes to self-awareness—that ability to actually recognize your own patterns. We act from within ourselves, which means we're essentially prisoners of our own conditioning. Getting an out of the box perspective isn't really possible in any absolute sense; it's always going to be partial at best. And honestly? The odds of even getting that partial glimpse are pretty slim for a whole host of reasons...
I won't overcomplicate it, but cultural norms have this potential to act as a ruthless authority, basically promising that life will be miserable if you don't conform. But let's be real—those norms don't hold a candle to, say, traumatic or illegal abuse, which ends up reshaping a person's entire internal compass of right and wrong in a way that culture just can't touch.
If someone grew up dealing with abuse from the time they were a kid, their intuition starts associating "bad" with "good" and vice versa. It’s like throwing gasoline on a fire when they clash with social norms that feel completely alien to their very being—they end up feeling crushed by an unfair world that feels like an intruder or a predator invading their very soul.
Now, yeah, you could argue this example only applies to extreme cases, but it's really not that simple...
Our inherent subjectivity regarding reality makes us incredibly vulnerable to moral decay. If a massive pile of cash lands in our lap after we've done something that puts lives at risk—lives that aren't even in our immediate line of sight—we aren't going to feel a shred of responsibility because... well, you know how it goes: "out of sight, out of mind." Pressing a button that triggers a nuclear strike halfway across the globe feels no different than pressing any other button. Until you're staring down the fates of millions of people caused by your single click, that button is nothing more than a video game.
It’s the exact same deal with so many of the things we do without even noticing.
You snap "just give it to me" at a cashier instead of asking nicely, you insult a college student who's already stuck dealing with the idiocy of your ISP's policies, or you treat service workers like garbage because your company rewards that behavior—all while convincing yourself you're building a better world for your kids and whatnot.
I can't tell you what it means to live a "good life," but I can certainly see the illusions we use to justify grabbing whatever we want, right here and right now.

Don't try to carry life on your back; instead, just let life carry you along, because I truly believe that we find our most complete selves when we finally learn how to give ourselves away.
It’s about being both the vineyard and the farmer, weathering every harsh drought, every bitter frost, and those heavy summer hailstorms that knock the wind out of you, all while knowing you have the strength to start over.
You have to be the fruit and the wine itself, so that even when life starts to wind down—much like those quiet evenings when the shadows begin to stretch long across the porch—you can take those final sips
and taste the richness of everything you've endured, finding the deep flavor of all those hard-won years, the trials, and the challenges that actually made you better.
It's about having the grace to begin again. It's about truly living.