{"id":465,"date":"2013-09-27T20:06:27","date_gmt":"2013-09-27T20:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=465"},"modified":"2025-06-24T22:00:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T22:00:43","slug":"eudaimonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/eudaimonia\/","title":{"rendered":"Eudaimonia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yep – this is a word I had never seen before as well – yes – perhaps that is a reflection on my ‘ignorance’ as testified by the title of the blog, since\u00a0Eudaimonia<\/a>\u00a0is, in fact, the highest ideal for a good life according to Aristotle.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The translation that seems most apt is “flourishing” and this is what the authors suggest to think of in\u00a0The Shrink and the Sage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Problem With Happiness<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whilst being happy is clearly a ‘good thing’ it can also be unattainable under some circumstances – what is important to note is that the lack of happiness does not mean that “life is not good”.\u00a0 Happiness tends to be a ‘fleeting’ emotion – which comes and goes with our moods and feelings – whereas the feeling that we are enjoying a good life (or not) is a more long term state.<\/p>\n

Of course, in some ways we are dealing with semantics – for some people “happy” is not just associated with being joyful, laughing and joking – it is also used for contentment and, I suppose, sufficiency. The statement, “I am happy with my life”, is probably more a reflection of eudaimonia than a reflection of extreme joy.<\/p>\n

This is a problem with words – it is always difficult to define the meaning.\u00a0 Indeed it is probably more often than not that the meaning that is heard is different from the meaning that is said!!\u00a0 In his post to LinkedIn and Facebook yesterday Mel Schwartz said<\/p>\n

To communicate effectively, what you think I said is more important than what I’m sure I said. If my message falls on deaf ears, I need to work toward solving that. I’m responsible for my communication being heard clearly. So if I think you’ll be reactive or defensive to what I have to say, I need to be thoughtful in how I say it. I want to find a way to help you not be reactive, for that will obviously help me. Your gain is my gain. The goal is not to win, but to be heard and understood. Consider that before you start your communication and you’ll certainly benefit.<\/em><\/div>\n

So here we have it – as I say “I am happy” – what do you imagine I mean?\u00a0 It is not just that statement, of course, everything that I am writing here depends on the reader understanding what I meant. (rather than what I wrote – which to me is the same thing, but to other people may well not be – indeed probably isn’t)<\/p>\n

This is, of course, a bit of a sidetrack away from the “be happy” them of the post, however, it is something that affects us in all parts of our lives – we instinctively assume that when we say something those who hear us will understand what is said.\u00a0 That’s just the way it is.\u00a0 That is also the root of so many misunderstandings, so many arguments, so many conflicts.<\/p>\n

Getting back to the topic….<\/p>\n

The sentence that particularly caught my eye – mainly because it harks back to one of the recurrent themes here – was the following:<\/p>\n

Taking the attitude that we must ensure we\u2019re happy will make us vulnerable to disappointment, regret and self-blame when (not if) the world does not cooperate with our desires.<\/em><\/div>\n

This is the place that I ended the\u00a0previous post<\/a>\u00a0at.\u00a0 We cannot know all the outside influences that will stop us achieving what we set out to achieve (and therefore stop us, presumably from being happy) because there are so many and – even when we can assess them as risks – they can at best be given a likelihood of occurrence.\u00a0 It is probably optimistic to say that there is a one in a million chance that we achieve precisely what we set out to achieve.<\/p>\n

This, of course, needn’t be a problem.\u00a0 It is “just life” and as long as we accept the deviations from our originally intended course – and recognise that these deviations are out of our control – then we can be ‘happy’ that we were – as the previous post suggested – the best that we could.<\/p>\n

The other significant throwback on this topic is to\u00a0Viktor Frankl<\/a>\u00a0– whom I have talked about a number of times in this blog, but particularly in the post\u00a0Inspirational Writing<\/a>.\u00a0 Its interesting how he has come up in my life recently in so many different ways.\u00a0 Specifically, the reference in respect to happiness is that Frankl espoused the need for meaning – without giving your life meaning you cannot be happy (or fulfilled).<\/p>\n

Apart from Frankl there are two other names that surfaced in this part of the book – both of them have equally appeared in my thinking, but I don’t think I have explicitly mentioned either in the blog before – they are\u00a0Daniel Kahneman<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi<\/a>.\u00a0 They both deserve to be given a lot more space than just a quick mention here – in the case of Kahneman I have read a lot of his writing and was particularly influenced by\u00a0Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/a>.\u00a0 Csikszentmihalyi, on the other hand, has so far gained entry into my thinking thanks to others writing about him.\u00a0 His book,\u00a0Flow: The Psychology of Happiness: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness<\/a>\u00a0is on my list to read.<\/p>\n

So – to summarise – happiness – in the sense of unbroken joy – is patently unattainable, however, if we think of it as fulfillment or better, flourishing, then it becomes something that we must continually aim for.<\/p>\n

Whilst doing that, we need to be continually aware that it is certain that we will fall short of what we are aiming at – usually for reasons outside of our control.\u00a0 There are a significant number of forces acting upon us that will likely redirect the flow of events.\u00a0 We are not alone!!!\u00a0 We cannot do anything, but it causes other things to happen – you cannot do just one thing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yep – this is a word I had never seen before as well – yes – perhaps that is a reflection on my ‘ignorance’ as testified by the title of the blog, since\u00a0Eudaimonia\u00a0is, in fact, the highest ideal for a good life according to Aristotle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[75,79,103,110,119],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-books","tag-cognition","tag-philosophical","tag-systems-thinking","tag-worldview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3058,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/3058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}