Following up on my post about Shige Oishi's concept of psychological richness, I've continued to reflect on the aims of life, which has led me to the following formulation: for myself at least, I aspire to live a life that is joyful, meaningful, and beautiful.
To my mind, "joy" captures something deeper than "pleasure" or even "happiness" because joy is closely bound up with its associated activity; indeed, joy can refer either to a feeling (e.g., "the joy of being alive") or to an activity / thing (e.g., "music is one of my greatest joys"). Moreover, pleasure can be purely physical, whereas joy seems to be suffused with awareness and attention. A joyful life aligns with Aristotle's description of "a life of enjoyment".
As to meaning, psychologists such as Michael Steger have identified cognitive, motivational, and evaluative components: making sense of your life and the world around you, having long-term aspirations that structure your day-to-day activities, and assessing your life as having worth and significance. A meaningful life aligns with Aristotle's description of "a life of excellence".
Although richness of experience seems to be one aspect of a beautiful life, I think there's more: a sense that all the parts of your life fit together well, some measure of balance or proportion, a due ordering of means to ends, a feeling of unity or wholeness, a certain kind of grandeur, and an almost aesthetic perception that your life is something special. A beautiful life aligns somewhat with Aristotle's description of "a life of sagacity" broadly construed, since when you have acquired wisdom you act for the sake of what's beautiful.
If I'm right that the best rendering of the ancient Greek word εὐδαιμονία is "fulfillment" rather than "happiness" or even "flourishing", then we might be able to see that a life of fulfillment is a life filled to the full with joyful, meaningful, beautiful activities and experiences. This feels like a pretty complete list to me, but as always your mileage may vary...
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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