The question of how to live well has been the subject of some of the greatest philosophical thought and literary works since ancient times. That is not by accident, because it is one of the most profound and demonstrably important questions we can ask ourselves. And yet, it is a question that most of us are rarely encouraged to grapple with any intensity or seriousness during our formative years. 

Even if we had the prescience to ask such a question, mentors and teachers may hasten to tell us that it is a question that is impossible to answer in a general sense, and that it is up to each of us to answer for ourselves. Instead, the business of teaching, learning and personal development – from kindergarten to university and later at workplaces – is focused on providing us with tools to productively engage with and ‘succeed’ in the economy. That’s just SMART.

When our idea of success is too narrowly defined – in terms of a job title we wish to earn, an amount of wealth we wish to accumulate or any other quantifiable change we wish to make in this world – no matter how noble that idea of success is - it is easy to ignore case studies of individuals who are ‘successful’ in their careers and yet ‘fail’ according to their own definitions of success in personal life, and vice versa. It is reasonable to conclude from such stories that, to ‘succeed’ in one aspect of life, one must be ready to compromise on others. There is a grain of truth in the notion, but that’s not the whole truth. Eudaimonia is an idea that helps us think about success in terms of living purposefully, and finding value as well as meaning in outcomes we may otherwise merely reduce to ‘wins’ and ‘losses’.

The question about how to live well deserves to be explored also because it can open our minds to wisdom that some of the greatest human minds have accumulated over two and a half millennia. They have prepared a banquet of thought that we are invited to feast on. The idea of Eudaimonia that Aristotle wrote about in his ‘Nicomachean ethics’ is as relevant to us today as it was in ancient cultures and the values underpinning it remain the same, even though we may interpret them on our own terms.

For Aristotle, the purpose of life was to pursue the highest human good and it was in that pursuit that one’s Eudaimonia could be found. It is a direct challenge to the common conception that ‘happiness is all we want in life’. Instead, the path to Eudaimonia is the path that forces us to make use of all our senses and faculties, manifesting the best and highest of our virtues, and appreciating fully what it means to be alive. Even when that path leads us through hardship and suffering. Eudaimonia is what we find most desirable for its own sake rather than as a means towards achieving something else.