What is the Most Important Thing in Life?

This is no doubt a very big question. Something that might come to mind immediately is happiness – Happiness is the most important thing in life. Or is it something else?

Being such an important question – maybe the most important question, it should be pondered for a while. It may help to look to the perspectives of philosophers, psychologists, and various religious traditions, where there are sure be differing opinions and arguments.

So what is the most important thing in life?

It shouldn’t take much convincing to show anyone that the most important thing in life is neither money nor fame. The simple proof of this is that many people have money and/ or fame, yet are miserable and would rather end their life. Aside from the long list of successful suicides of the rich and famous, here is a surprising list of some rich and famous who have attempted suicide:

Halle Berry,  Donna Summer,  Drew Carey,  Mike Wallace,
Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis, Jr.,  Diana, Princess of Wales,
Walt Disney,  Eminem, Clark Gable,  Billy Joel, Elton John,
Sinead O’Connor,  Ozzy Osbourne, Marie Osmond,  Richard Pryor,
Tina Turner,  Mike Tyson,  Vanilla Ice

(Note: Attempted suicide information was sourced from Mental Floss, some of these suicides have been denied by the individual)

 

There are other possible responses for the most important thing in life that are worth exploring.

Of course, there are the pragmatic needs of air, food, water, etc. We obviously need these in order to physically survive, but let’s assume we have these and our question goes beyond survival necessities.

Here are some real contenders:

1.  Health
2.  Relationships
3.  Positive Self-View
4.  Learning
5.  Growing
6.  Love

Let’s explore each of these.

Is the most important thing in life Health?

Being healthy does seem to be an important element in life. After all, if you are not healthy, getting through each day can be painful and challenging. But here again, we can look to a number of individuals who are healthy (let’s just consider the health of the body), and yet they are miserable and do not enjoy life.

What’s more, isn’t it possible to have an unhealthy body, yet still be happy and truly enjoy your life? This is not something that is easy, but it is possible.

While health is certainly desired and should be a goal that everyone aims for, it is not the most important thing.

If you disagree, think about the things that you do to your body. Are you always taking care of your body, eating only the right foods, avoiding toxins, getting proper sleep, limiting stress, etc.? If health were the most important thing in life, we would not have an obesity epidemic, not to mention the long list of other chronic and deadly ailments.

How about Relationships, are they the most important thing?

Once again, having positive, loving relationships is something that we all want. It is hard to think of life without relationships. In fact, many philosophers including Aristotle and Epicurus believed that friendships were vital to living a happy life.

While this may be true, does this make relationships the most important thing in life? It is possible for someone to have many loving people in their life, and yet they do not feel fulfilled. There are a great number of people who have wonderful and supportive friends and family, yet they are still in search of meaning and importance in life.

Is having a Positive Self-View the most important thing?

The number of individuals who have low self-esteem is sadly very high. It is so very important in life to love yourself and think well of yourself.

As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s possible to be happy with your life if you don’t think positively about yourself. I do, however, think it is possible to think highly of yourself, but still find life unfulfilling. There must be more to life than our own Self-View.

What about Learning and Growing?

We should be able to combine Learning and Growing; I’m not sure you can do one without the other. So are these things the most important things in life?

Being in love with learning and personal growth, I would like to say that these are the most important things in life, yet I am sure to find many scholars and academics who would disagree with me.

While I will argue that learning and growing are necessary for happiness, I cannot say that they are the most important thing in life.

What about Love?

Love must surely be the most important thing in life, right? This certainly is a tough one. It does seem possible that love could be the most important thing in life. Once again though, we fall into a similar problem – it is possible to love many people and be loved by many people, yet still feel something lacking in life.

Happiness?

After bringing objections to all of these ideas, we are now left with defending the idea that Happiness is the most important thing in life.

I turn to philosophy for some guidance…

Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) said that if we want to understand the best way to live our life (and what would give life the most meaning), we need to understand what our final purpose or goal in life is.

For example, we can look to a university student and see that their goal or purpose is to graduate. However, when we look closer, we can see that this is only a sub-goal to some greater goal, which is to get a good job. This too, however, is a sub-goal. One wants to get a good job so they can have nice things in life or support their family, etc.

The question is:  What is it that we do for its own sake?
What is our final goal?

Aristotle said what we do for its own sake is the Supreme Good (the most important thing in life) and that Supreme Good is Happiness.

Every single thing we do in life is done because we think and hope it will lead to happiness. Even if you do something that might be initially unpleasant, you do it because it will make you happy in the long term. All of our actions have one end in mind and that is Happiness. This is the most important thing in life.

For example, do we attend university and study long hours and stress over exams and grades because it makes us happy? Certainly not. We are making a sacrifice because we hope that these actions will lead to happiness in the future. We can see that a greater happiness is worth any suffering that we may experience now.

Everything we do, we do because we want to be happy. This now presents us with another problem to think about: How do we achieve happiness?

This is a bigger question to answer and one that we all struggle with. Yet it seems we spend little time trying to find the right ways in which to attain happiness.

We struggle through life, doing things that we think will make us happy, yet they don’t. We must open ourselves up to other pathways to happiness.

Read what Epicurus has to say about how to be happy in life.

What is the one thing you want in life? Love, health, relationships, knowledge, happiness? Such an important question, yet we spend little time thinking about it.