living your best life - good lives, -do, vagabonding
RWL #296
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! It was a looong week - I won’t bore you with the details - but I’m just so glad it’s Saturday. On Friday morning I did have the chance to do a podcast interview with the chief medical officer for the NH State Hospital, which is the state’s secure mental health facility. That will be coming out shortly on the Forge. So when I say the week was long, it wasn’t all bad, just a lot.
Something I think about quite a lot is if I have the right attitude about life. It’s cliche to say that happiness comes mostly from how you choose to see your life and circumstances, but it’s hard to live that every day. I do believe living your best life is more a state of mind than an objective reality. I try to appreciate what I have and have had each day, but I’m not always successful.
This week’s links all deal with how you choose to think about living your best life (in one way or another). It includes the video of my talk I mentioned a couple of week’s ago.
(Pic above is the walkway to the front door of the LHH. Suddenly it’s fall.)
So with that, willing good for all of you, I present you with the links!
Read
What: Social Philosophy and Policy, Good lives: prolegomena
https://digitalcommons.hollins.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=philfac
Why: A very interesting article offering brief summaries of the many ways that the “good life” has been defined in philosophical discourse. The one I most identify with the unitary theory, “personal excellence”. It is described briefly as:
Personal excellence or achievement measures a good life by the extent to which it realizes one's personal potential, given one's particular circumstances and talents. The standard here is individual (rather than generic) human excellence…
This is an academic article, but it is very accessible. It’s something of a catalog, but there are so many different “ways” to the good life.
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Watch
What: Bonica, The Way of Health Administration Education - HAE-do (8 min)
Why: My “spark” talk for the annual Management Forum at the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA). I talk about trying to find a way to personal enlightenment as a professor of health administration, generalizing from the writings of a 16th century samurai. Fun, right? You bet!
Wait - you don’t teach health administration? That’s ok - the idea is generalizable. That’s the point!
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Listen
What: The Art of Manliness, The Vagabond Travel Ethos (45 min)
https://the-art-of-manliness.simplecast.com/episodes/the-vagabond-travel-ethos-UbHz4MYZ
Why: I haven’t read the book, but it sounds interesting. I love to travel, and I like to do so without too much advance preparation. I’ve never taken the time to do long term travel, and I suspect I never will. I live a life too anchored to my work. But I like his discussion of how to change your attitude about what is near you. Walking somewhere is indeed a very different experience than driving in a car, for example.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next week!
Mark
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picaso