溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Can No Life Be Called Happy Until Its End?
Can we say whether a life was happy only after that life has wholly ended?
In every matter, one must look to how it ends.
Solon's maxim "look to the end" opened the question of what happiness is and when it is decided. Aristotle took it up, holding that happiness (eudaimonia) is not a momentary feeling but a judgment on a whole completed life — as one swallow does not make a spring, a day's pleasure does not make a life happy. Epicurus and the Stoics gave a different answer: happiness lies not in some future end but in the peace of mind of this present moment, so there is no need to wait for the end. Is a life's happiness decided at the last, or completed in each moment? The question still divides seeing life as a whole from living the now.
In an age of elation and despair over each moment's wins and losses, Solon's question — call no one happy until the end — returns us to the view of a whole life.
When the wealthy king Croesus asks whether he is not the happiest of men, the sage Solon defers his answer: no one can be called happy before the end is seen.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
When the wealthy king Croesus asks whether he is not the happiest of men, the sage Solon defers his answer: no one can be called happy before the end is seen. For even at the height of wealth and power, a life can be overturned to its last moment. I feel this question fits December's threshold exactly. We hastily grade a life by its present good and ill, but a life's meaning shows itself only at the last. Yet if I must wait for the end to know, what am I to hold to now? I stand before my own unfinished life, carrying that question.
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