CHAPTER 4: The Search For The Good Life

(Reflection Paper)

It is defined by the author that good life is when we meet the needs for our

physical survivor, if we have freedom to fulfill our spiritual aspiration and if we can

contribute to the growth and development to the growth and development of the society

in which we live in. And in order to obtain a healthy, a happy and a socially useful life,

we need ethics and morality. I may agree with this because it presents a good meaning

of how man can meet a good life.

As said above, physical survivor is needed to meet good life. But how do we

satisfy it? To meet physical needs, we have to acquire good health, since with this, we

can have a healthy mind. I concur with the author in his explanation in satisfying our

physical needs. As we can see in our world today, health is an important factor to be

able to work, it helps us to function competently. And as the quote says, “health is

wealth”.

We need to know that our purpose is not bare existence. It is shown in the book

the biblical dictum saying, “man does not live by bread alone”. It means that the fact that

we, a rational human beings, do not exist just to eat and procreate, instead, we live to

have a fuller life. This is when the significance of spiritual aspiration enters. We tend to

build a world of culture and civilization. We should treat science, philosophy, religion,

morality and the arts or product of our spiritual aspiration as refinement of our conduct,

humanization of our nature, and for the liberation of the human spirit. But remember, we

do not live for these.

 As a member of our society, we must abide by the requirements of the economic,

the political and cultural institutions. We should be involved in advancing not only our

personal but also the welfare and development of our fellowmen to have a socially

useful life. It is written in the bible that Christ said: to make the blind see, to make the

lame walk, and set the captives free. To make the blind see means we should enlighten

those who are still hunting or searching in the dark on the need to restructure our

economic system to have an equity in our place. To make the lame walk is to

encourage those who have fallen in despair to rise again and not to lose hope to make

our country better. And to set the captives free is to let prisoners or the victim of

economic injustice and social oppression understand that their liberation from

everything not by mere creative thought but by political action. To deduced the author’s

explanation, it means that we must help each other, guide one another in the path that

were crossing.

As a christian, I think we should rely on God for our liberation. His words would

be a great basis on how we should live our life. We must start to read more His words or

the bible, and understand it not literally but figure deep meanings in its words. And with

this, I presume that it will help us for our liberation.