When my partner, Zan, and I drove our van out of the parking lot in Buenos Aires in 2006 – and faced southwards towards Patagonia – we had rules for the trip ahead: no computer, no phone, no social media, no camera, no compass, no internet. These were the rules. But, more importantly, no plans. Instead, we hauled dozens of books on philosophy, like The Art of Happiness by Epicurus and Conversations of Socrates, and some odd sprinklings of sociology and psychology texts. The question as to how to live was once the focus of thought foremost in the minds of ancient philosophers. What could we learn from them?
For almost two decades I’ve been travelling the world searching for an answer to the question: what makes for a flourishing life? Is it riches, success, fame, a shiny sports car, a mansion with a pool, or is it something more elusive, much like hidden treasure on a map?
Upon leaving Buenos Aires, we used the sun to navigate, joining a line of trucks travelling south. The Fiat panel van, brand new off the lot, purred with the energy of a child, its tinny wheels spinning with delight. The journey would take us to the southernmost town in the world, Ushuaia, and then we’d head back north through Chile, Peru and beyond to France, Spain and lastly over to Australia.
Some philosophers have said that Homo sapiens, man the thinker, should be Homo faber, man the maker, because a defining characteristic of humans is the need to work, create, innovate and build. The things we make are externalisations of our existence. When we create the world around us, we create ourselves. A meaningful life therefore entails having meaningful work, or something to do. But on the far reaches of the Argentine coastline, in Ushuaia, we meet a subculture of people whose life purpose is in not working – to live simply, cheaply and to expand the hours to their daily limit. These cabin dwellers share shelter, stitch clothes, make bulk food with water and stock, all in the spirit of no work.
When life is a ticking clock, why would anyone work? Why would anyone think: “You know, I only have 4,000 weeks here on this glorious earth and I’m going to use those God-given hours to drive a forklift truck, nurse the sick, drive a bus, or teach a class. I’m going to limit my holidays to four to six weeks a year, and the rest of the time, I’m on task.”
Having observed these cabin dwellers, however, I am less convinced they have the answer. English philosopher Bertrand Russell believes that most of us are better off working, than not, even if the work we do is a tad dull or monotonous. Work allows us to use our skills and build on something. “The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive life has to offer,” he says. For non-workers, in contrast, each day unfolds in much the same manner as the last and, with nothing to build on, they are simply passing time, neither improving, nor building – in fact, they are in stasis.
We travel onwards, but we don’t use a map, nor do we have a plan. By doing so, we’re forced to confront the countryside we’re passing through rather than musing about some distant vista. By removing a destination, time expands. Storm clouds pass, to be followed by clear skies. The mind scans the environment for immediate possibilities. And so, when we meet a group of missionaries on a minibus in Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua, we follow them to their camp – a dirt patch in a field, roadless and forgotten. They are open, curious and good listeners, and strangely comforting in this unnerving place. We share meals at a wooden table in the middle of the field. When we accompany them to the supermarket, they are profoundly captivated by food items, ingredients, packaging, as though the world were in Technicolor. Supermarket excursions span out into hours as the missionaries place coconut water and yuca into trolleys with the relish of children discovering candy canes.
As we drive back to the complex, they take an intense interest in the setting sun, the Spanish word for soap, unfinished second storeys on buildings, poles and wires that stick haphazardly through a roof – what could they be for? – and the patterned colours of parrots and how they compare to the ones in Costa Rica. Could we call it a zest for life, or even joy?
Bertrand Russell calls it zest and argues that it’s a distinctive mark of happiness. Strawberries, he says, are neither good nor bad. But for the man who likes them, he gains pleasure from them that is denied to the man who does not. “To that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live,” Russell says. He goes on to write that the man who enjoys football is to that extent superior in zest to the man who does not gain pleasure from the sport. And the woman who loves to read is superior in zest to the woman who does not read for pleasure. The more interests we have in life, the more blessed we are. “The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities for happiness he has, and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another. Life is too short to be interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days.”
Greek philosopher Antisthenes puts it differently: one needs to furnish oneself with unsinkable goods that can float out of a shipwreck with you, he writes. In other words, in the dark times, it will be your interests, your hobbies, or as the French refer to it, your passe-temps – literally meaning “pass the time” – that you will turn to. “To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies and they must all be real,” argues Winston Churchill in his essay Painting as a Pastime. But these interests need not be hinged on how much money you have, or earn, but rather be something you can benefit from no matter your circumstances.
We travel to a château three hour’s drive south of Paris. The owner, Henry, dashes down the driveway to greet us, wearing slacks and a blue blazer. He is a hedonist, an aesthete, a lover of pleasure. Henry is known for buying extravagant wine, week-long parties and travel – winging from one event or occasion in the world to the next. While Henry, by all accounts, seems to be having a marvellous time of it, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard suggests that hedonism will lead to despair, unless the hedonist transitions to a more ethical stage of existence.
For those with the means to be aesthetes, like Henry with his trust fund, his redundancy cheque and his good fortune to be born a good-looking male in a well-paying field, one could say he is blessed to live the aesthetic life. But the aesthetic life still has to be worked at – new pleasures found, logistics organised for their attainment, forever coming up with the next pleasure hit, whether that’s in the form of a new luxury to indulge or a new travel destination or a new friendship, and then finding the means to continually fund it all as hedonistic pursuits take up more and more time and cost ever more money. One can become travel-weary from having so much pleasure, exhausted by the chase. “With the possession or certain expectation of good things,” writes the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, “our demand rises, and increases our capacity for further possession and larger expectations.”
What’s more, the aesthetic life can be full of hedonic angst when we discover via social media that others are supposedly living more pleasurable lives than we are. People post an image of their smiling face at après-ski in the Andes, only to discover with quiet resignation that others are lounging about with rattlesnakes in Costa Rica. “What applies to drugs applies, also, within limits, to every kind of excitement,” writes Bertrand Russell in The Conquest of Happiness. “A life too full of excitement is an exhausting life, in which continually stronger stimuli are needed to give the thrill that has come to be thought an essential part of pleasure.”
After almost two decades of researching the art of flourishing, what have I discovered? How do we recognise a person who is flourishing? It’s evident when the ordinary measures we’re taught to use – house, car, job, clothes, success in a particular field – are not applied. Imagine hanging by a fingertip from a cliff face;, below you is a gaping void, and at this moment you contemplate what matters most in your life. It’s likely to be the same things you’ll notice in a person who is flourishing – kindness, readiness to be involved, appreciation of the beauty of nature, spontaneity, love of life and, more than anything else, their sense of joy: that elusive emotion, which appears to be the hallmark of flourishing.
Flourish: The Extraordinary Journey into Finding Your Best Self by Antonia Case (Bloomsbury, £16.99) is available at guardianbookshop.com for £14.95
