What Does It Mean To Live A Good Life?
Notes from a Decade of Seeking: Philosophy, Nature, and the Self
Introduction
Every journey begins with a question.
Mine began in 2015 with the question: What does it mean to live a good life?
I had just left a well-paying job in the Indian auto industry to become a primary school teacher with Teach for India. Working with children from an informal settlement in Chennai exposed me, viscerally and personally, to a broader cross-section of the human condition. I saw children under the age of ten endure violence, trauma, addiction, and premature death, and yet also embody resilience, playfulness, and a fierce will to live.
I remember one student coming to school with a six-inch burn on their thigh, inflicted as a form of discipline by a parent who simply didn’t know better. These encounters shook me and stirred a deep discontent.
I started to question everything: the career ladder, middle-class aspirations, even the promise of wealth. Neither the poor nor the rich seemed to have inherently “better” lives. Was work the only axis of a life? Was I doomed to follow a template: hustle, save, retire, and make peace with missed meaning?
That existential angst, a gnawing sense of alienation, of feeling estranged from the promises and patterns of modern life, became a turning point.
Around that time, I discovered The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. It helped me see that what I was going through wasn’t random. It was part of an archetypal journey, one walked by seekers across time and culture. Every person is offered a call to adventure, and choosing to answer it is what sets a meaningful life in motion.
This book sparked my obsession with philosophy. Over the next ten years, I devoured texts in philosophy, psychology, and spirituality; seeking a grounded, embodied understanding of what makes a life worthwhile.
This essay, and the series to follow, aims to synthesize those learnings. Each upcoming installment will expand on one of the core themes introduced here, offering personal reflections, philosophical insights, and practical perspectives on what it takes to live a good life.
The Baseline: Safety, Security & Stability
Before anything else, a good life needs a sturdy foundation: food, safety, financial stability, and mental and physical health. As Maslow pointed out, one cannot self-actualize without basic security.
I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck. I’ve also had the privilege of saving and having choices. And what I’ve learned is this:
Money solves money problems. But not happiness itself.
Research shows that people who are already happy tend to derive more joy from additional income.1 But money alone doesn’t teach us how to be happy. It simply removes a barrier.
In other words, success doesn’t guarantee happiness.
The same holds true for health, food, and safety. They are necessary preconditions to start living a happy life. But they are not sufficient in themselves.
Only when that base was solid could I truly reflect, grow, and contribute. And once I achieved that freedom, I was surprised to find I still felt a kind of emptiness, like something was missing.
That’s when I internalized a quiet truth:
“What got me here isn’t going to take me to where I need to go next.”
To reach the next phase, I had to do something counterintuitive: tune into what was already in front of me.
To embrace the present, through all its joys and discomforts.
Flow & Presence
What does it feel like to be fully alive?
It started with me noticing the trappings of my own thoughts. Even while I was in the middle of engaging experiences like a music concert or a celebration with loved ones, I noticed my thoughts took me elsewhere. My insecurities bubbled up to the surface. My anxieties about the future distracted me from fully enjoying even pleasurable experiences. I was planning the next step instead of enjoying what was in front of me.
Ever noticed yourself reaching for your phone when you see a breathtaking sunset or performance? We know full well the euphoria and awe are fleeting, and to distract ourselves from that dread of our mundane lives, we reach to record a photo we probably will never see again.2
Through mindfulness, yoga, and journaling, I started observing the mechanisms of my thoughts without judgment, a skill I continue to work on. Over time, I started being able to completely tune in for certain activities for short bursts. I started experiencing time seeming to slow down as I was fully immersed in enjoyable activities. For me, it has often shown up in moments of flow: when skiing, woodworking, climbing, or even having an unfiltered conversation. These moments often feel like stepping into the first stages of the hero’s journey, crossing the threshold into something uncertain, but vividly alive.
This theme explores Taoism’s wu wei, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, and modern insights from Steven Kotler on how presence is both a path and an outcome of a good life. I will share practices that have enabled me to live with presence and how it can have outsized impact in both our personal and professional lives.
Once safety and stability are met, once the mind begins to quiet, we begin to notice others. We begin to care. In that noticing, through attention, vulnerability, and intention, love arises. And love, perhaps more than anything else, reveals the possibility of a good life.
Love (for Self & Others)
Before his death in the movie Into the Wild, Christopher McCandless scrawled these words onto the wall of his abandoned bus:
"Happiness is only real when shared."
At its deepest, our existence has meaning only in relation to others. Love is that relation. It is not merely emotion or romance. It’s a mode of being. As Plato writes in The Symposium, love (Eros) is the desire for what we lack. It often begins in superficial attraction but, over time, can ascend toward genuine care, truth, and beauty. Love becomes a bridge. A force that dispels the illusion that we are separate, alone. It connects us to one another, and to the larger universe around us.
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” – Rumi
Learning to love myself and others, beyond ego and projection, has been a long journey. One that is lifelong. I’ve explored this through the Buddhist practice of metta (loving-kindness), cultivating love as a skill through discipline, patience, and courage (Fromm), experiencing Krishnamurti’s love as choiceless awareness, recognizing Simone Weil’s belief that “attention is the rarest and purest form of love,” and reflecting on Plato’s vision of love as a transcendent path to beauty and truth.
“If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.” —Charles Bukowski
It starts here. If you aren't able to truly love yourself, then every other love, whether for your children, parents, or partner, comes from a place of scarcity. Instead of liberating, it becomes stifling. For yourself and for others.
Community & Belonging
Beyond family lies a wider world. Real community, as I’ve come to learn, is built not just on proximity, but on shared values, intentional participation, and spaces where people feel seen. The longest-running study on happiness—Harvard’s 85-year longitudinal research—has consistently found that the quality of our relationships is the single strongest predictor of long-term happiness and health.3
The quality of our relationships is the single strongest predictor of long-term happiness and health.
And yet, many of us don’t invest beyond our inherited social circles, or we remain tethered to ones whose values no longer align with our growth. As our tribal, religious, and neighborhood structures dissolve, loneliness has emerged as a modern epidemic. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General called it a public health crisis.4
Today, most of our energy is consumed by home and work: the first and second places. But as sociologist Ray Oldenburg noted, humans have always needed a third place: informal public spaces for conversation, camaraderie, and community. From the agora of Ancient Greece where Socrates debated, to churches, temples, salons, cafés, and local clubs—these places nourished both individual spirit and collective life. They weren’t optimized for productivity or consumption, but for connection. Yet in modern life, we rarely invest in them. When we do, it’s often for utility, not belonging.
We need new forms of community: vibrant third places, shared rituals, and collective projects that reweave our social fabric.
Thinkers like Tocqueville understood this early. In Democracy in America, he observed that civic life and voluntary associations were essential to democracy. Not just as political tools but as the training ground for empathy and mutual responsibility. He argued that for democracies to remain healthy and resilient, citizens must be physically engaged in civic life. This engagement goes beyond just showing up to vote or posting on social media. It involves participating in shared endeavors, local groups, and community dialogue.
Similarly, Hannah Arendt reminds us that the public realm is where we meet as equals, act together, and co-create meaning.
And deeper still, philosophies like Ubuntu remind us:
“I am because we are.”
Identity is not solely personal. It is relational. A good life cannot be lived in isolation.
And yet, community doesn’t require the surrender of self. Paradoxically, we need others, but we don’t relinquish our own judgment, values, or authenticity. We show up in love and in community as ourselves, from the unique vantage point that only we have. That is why the next step in the journey is to go within.
Becoming Oneself (Individuation)
Inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi are the words Gnōthi Seauton, “Know Thyself.”
But how do we know who we are? Who are we beneath the roles, performances, and expectations we’ve learned to embody since childhood? What lies beneath the masks we wear at work, in families, and in public life?
For Jung, the answer lies in a lifelong process he called individuation: the journey of becoming who we truly are. Not a journey of self-improvement, but of self-realization, uncovering what was always there beneath the surface, beneath the conditioning. As he writes:
“Individuation means becoming an ‘in-dividual,’ and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self.”
This part of the journey mirrors the hero’s descent into the unknown. It asks us to confront our shadows: the parts of ourselves we’ve disowned or repressed to become socially acceptable. It calls us to integrate opposites we’ve been taught to split apart: reason and emotion, strength and vulnerability, masculine and feminine, outer world and inner world. It asks us to look at the ego, that protective shell we’ve built to navigate society, and gently loosen its grip.
The ego doesn’t disappear, but it softens. It becomes less of a mask and more of a steward. As we individuate, we begin to live from a center that is not shaped by fear or performance, but by authenticity and wholeness.
I’ll share my own unmasking: the tension between cultural conformity and authenticity, and how I’m learning to live more unapologetically and compassionately.
We will explore Nietzsche’s view of self-realization by rejecting herd morality, embracing creative freedom, and affirming our lives as an artistic act. We will cover what Maslow describes as self-actualization: the process of realizing our fullest potential to live the most authentic, integrated, and creative version of ourselves.
Lastly, we will touch on Eastern philosophies like Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism. Zen speaks to beginner’s mind: a state of openness, humility, and presence that sees each moment as a rebirth.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” — Shunryu Suzuki
Advaita Vedanta points to self-realization as the understanding that our ego is not separate from universal consciousness. We begin to deconstruct the self by disidentifying from the body, mind, and ego, realizing that our deepest nature is not individual but infinite.
As we peel back the layers of ego, we begin to see that much of what we call identity is a construct shaped to meet the demands of society and survive our environment. Beneath it all lies something far more elusive: pure awareness, untouched by name, role, or story. And in touching that stillness, a deeper question arises: What is the point of it all?
Meaning & Higher Power
This question has haunted human beings across history. One answer has been religion: the belief in a divine being or higher power that gives life meaning and structure. But I’ve come to believe, along with many thinkers before me, that God was not discovered. “He” was invented as a symbol of our highest ideals and deepest yearnings.5 Personally, I don’t find the concept useful in my own search for meaning.
The universe is ever-changing, mysterious, and vast; for me, that is enough.
I don't ask what lies before or outside it. I choose instead to face what is here, now.
Nietzsche famously declared, “God is dead.” But he didn’t mean it triumphantly. He meant that Enlightenment thinking had eroded the metaphysical foundations on which European morality and meaning were built. Without God, we are left with terrifying freedom: the burden of constructing meaning without the comfort of absolute truth. His challenge was not nihilism, but self-overcoming: Become who you are. Create values that affirm life, even in the face of its suffering.
Become who you are.
Existentialism took up this mantle. Sartre argued that existence precedes essence: we are born without a preordained purpose, and must invent our own. Camus took it further: life is absurd, but that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. Like Sisyphus endlessly pushing his boulder, we can still find dignity and even joy in the struggle itself. “The struggle toward the heights,” he wrote, “is enough to fill a man's heart.”
Joseph Campbell offered yet another lens: myth. He showed how myths across cultures are not historical accounts of higher beings, but symbolic roadmaps for navigating the human journey. Their power lies not in their literal truth, but in their ability to evoke transformation. Rituals, in this sense, are not about dogma; they’re about cultivating the inner conditions for insight. The point isn’t the ceremony; it’s what it opens in us. That we are not separate from the rest of the universe. That every person, in every culture, is invited to the same adventure: to awaken, to suffer, to grow, and to return bearing gifts.
“What I think is that a good life is one hero’s journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure. You are called to new horizons.”
— Reflections on the Art of Living, Joseph Campbell
And then there’s Maslow, who began his career studying basic needs and ended it contemplating transcendence. In his later work, he revised his famous hierarchy of needs. Beyond self-actualization, the fulfillment of one’s unique potential, he proposed a higher level: self-transcendence. These are the peak experiences where the ego dissolves, where one feels united with something larger: nature, humanity, the cosmos. These moments aren’t about doing more. They’re about being: being fully alive, aware, and connected. Transcendence, for Maslow, was the culmination of a good life.
In the end, meaning may not be something we discover. It may be something we live into. Something we realize in hindsight, through presence, through struggle, through stories, through moments of awe. Whether grounded in myth, meaning, or mortality, the call is the same: to make peace with mystery, and to walk forward with our eyes open.
Nature & Cosmic Belonging
When I was 26, I moved from India to the United States. At the time, I planned to return home after completing my graduate degree and repaying my student loans. But over the years, something unexpected happened. I fell in love with the outdoors. From national parks to quiet city trails, America’s access to nature offered me something I hadn’t known I was missing. It began to reshape not only how I spent my time, but how I understood myself.
Time in the mountains, near rivers, or beneath a canopy of stars has shaped my inner world more than any book. Nature became more than a backdrop. It became a mirror, a teacher, and a sacred space for rest, reflection, and renewal. I remember lying atop Half Dome in Yosemite, watching the setting sun ignite the water below like fire. That night, by campfire light, I read these words Emerson:
“Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?” — Nature, 1836
It was then I began to see what Emerson saw: nature as a spiritual guide. Not through dogma, but through direct encounter. For Thoreau, nature stripped away the superficial and taught us how to live deliberately. For Muir, it was sacred: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” And Humboldt revealed nature as a vast web of interdependence that stirs awe and moral imagination.
To these thinkers, nature was never an escape from life. It was a return to what is most real. It softened the boundaries between self and world, between soul and cosmos.
Years later, lying under the stars in the Maasai Mara, just north of the Great Rift Valley in East Africa, near the region where the first humans once walked, I saw the Milky Way stretch across the sky like a great cosmic river. In that moment, something clicked. I began to sense the causal thread that connects all things: from the Big Bang, to the birth of stars, to the emergence of oxygen, water, and carbon. Each unfolding violently, yet precisely to make life possible. Earth’s Goldilocks conditions: its air, temperature, and pressure, are a cosmic fluke. And yet, they made everything that followed possible: the emergence of life, of consciousness, and eventually, of us.
The first human beings emerged from this very region nearly 200,000 years ago, taking their first steps into the world. And now, here I was: an echo of that same life, gazing up at the same sky. I wasn’t just witnessing nature. I was part of its memory, its continuity. Life had come full circle through me.
I understood then what so many wisdom traditions try to convey:
“You are the universe experiencing itself.” — unknown.
This is the heart of what Hinduism calls non-dualism: not two, but one. We are not separate from the cosmos. We are its living expression. Tribal and hunter-gatherer cultures lived in reverence of this truth. They did not seek dominion over nature, but communion with it.
To feel at home in the world again, we must remember: we are not merely in nature.
We are nature.
Work, Duty & Vocation
Ironically, it was my disillusionment with work that first set me down this philosophical rabbit hole.
Despite my best efforts to be a "good worker" at school, at nonprofits, and in corporations, I couldn't help but notice the contradictions baked into our institutions. In school, we were taught to perform for standardized tests or entry into elite institutions, not to learn or stay curious. In the corporate world, colleagues called each other “family” until the next round of layoffs. I saw short-term decisions driven by optics and shareholder pressure, made obsolete before the product even shipped. And in nonprofits, I saw another kind of performance: virtue signaling masked as moral high ground, often failing to acknowledge the very human complexities of ego, ambition, and trade-offs.
These contradictions weren’t just external frustrations. They began to unravel my own beliefs about success, impact, and identity. What was all this striving for, if the system itself felt hollow?
An average person in America spends close to a quarter of their waking lives either working, commuting, or preparing to be employed.6 The World Bank estimates that 90% of global migration is driven by economic opportunity.7 Yet only about 20% of people say they feel genuinely engaged at work: absorbed, passionate, and willing to take initiative.8
Let that sink in.
We spend a quarter of our conscious lives working, yet most of us do so simply because we have to, not because it brings us meaning.
Anthropologist David Graeber, in Bullshit Jobs, argues that up to half of all jobs in advanced economies are “bullshit”: roles even the workers admit are pointless. These aren’t poorly paid jobs. They’re meaningless ones that require pretending to matter.
Similarly, Venkatesh Rao’s The Gervais Principle breaks down corporate life into three types: sociopaths at the top who game the system, clueless middle managers who believe in it, and “losers” at the bottom who see through the illusion and do the bare minimum to preserve life outside work.9 As he puts it:
“The Loser’s main job is to keep a low profile, look busy, complete the minimum necessary, and reserve emotional investment for the rest of life.” — Venkatesh Rao
Karl Marx recognized the alienation modern capitalism creates. How labor gets stripped of joy, identity, and ownership. His solutions, however, feel idealistic and overlook the messiness of human desire and complexity.
Still, I believe there's a way through.
The Bhagavad Gita offers one. Arjuna, a warrior, breaks down on the battlefield, unsure of his moral duty. Krishna guides him back to dharma: the sacred obligation to act, not for reward or validation, but with sincerity and surrender. One’s role, be it carpenter, parent, or middle manager, can be meaningful when done with integrity.
Simone Weil, the French mystic and philosopher, took this seriously. She worked in factories to understand modern labor firsthand. To Weil, attention was sacred. If directed fully, even mundane work could become a spiritual offering. In her words, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Her insight echoes in the Japanese concept of ikigai, which translates loosely as “a reason for being.” It lies at the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
These thinkers remind us that work need not be our identity, but it can be a space of contribution and craft. Even if we aren’t there yet, we can orient ourselves toward work that invites growth, sincerity, and maybe even joy.
The Return: Living the Good Life
After writing this piece, I noticed something: each theme is connected. Flow enables presence. Nature grounds individuation. Love unlocks community. Community invites self-discovery. And work, done with intention, can become a vehicle for purpose, not just productivity.
There is no shortcut. No singular answer. A good life is not a trick or a milestone. It is a practice.
And that’s the best part. The point of life is life itself.
In Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer Deep Thought spends 7.5 million years calculating the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Only to reveal it as simply: 42. Here’s my attempt to give that answer a bit more mathematical meaning.
The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
42 = f(love, community, individuation, presence, work, higher power, nature) = lim(Δt → 0) of life (the infinite expressed in the present moment)
In plain English: the good life is found in the present moment, lived fully and intentionally.
The real question is: what does living a good life mean for me? That answer doesn’t arrive in a flash. It unfolds over time. It begins by asking. And it deepens through the way we live, love, work, and wonder.
All these insights, reflections, and practices mean nothing unless I embody them day by day, moment by moment. It’s a lifetime of training. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
In the language of the hero’s journey, this is the return. The good life doesn’t end with transformation. It continues through contribution.
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." — Voltaire, 1768
Thank you for sharing your journey of transformation and contribution.
I’m grateful for your fellowship and questions.
Your quiet truth—“What got me here isn’t going to take me where I need to go next”—freed my recursive doubts.
I feel steady… knowing you get me.