What’s It All About?

WE'RE ALWAYS STRIVING—the next pay raise, the next consumer purchase, the next self-improvement goal. But to what end?

Our time on this earth is fleeting, our impact minimal and our legacy quickly forgotten. A decade after we’re gone, we might be remembered by family and close friends, but not by many others. And yet we keep pushing forward.

Does death’s approach shed any light on this curious behavior? Far from it. If anything, my cancer diagnosis has pushed me to strive even more. You might dismiss this as denial of what’s certain to come or perhaps a desperate grab for control in a world where I no longer have much say over my destiny.

Alternatively, you might view this as some mix of selfishness and selflessness. For the religiously inclined, perhaps I’m aiming to leave the world very marginally better for the sake of God’s glory and my own immortal soul. For the more secular, maybe my goal is to ensure my family—and hence my genes—have a better shot at surviving and reproducing.

But while I’m not sure what propels my continued striving, even at this late stage, I know it makes me feel better. As I mentioned last week, accomplishment can deliver great happiness. That brings me to the final article I wrote for The Wall Street Journal before I left in 2008 to work for six years at Citigroup, or what my journalism friends would call "the dark side."

In that piece, I listed what I felt were the three components of a happy life: a sense of security, the freedom to pursue our passions, and a robust network of friends and family.

We all want slightly different versions of these things, but I believe the hunger for all three is almost universal. Together, they have the potential to leave us feeling safe, fulfilled and happy—innate desires that we carry with us throughout our life.

Do pursuing these three things make the world a better place? Perhaps marginally. They certainly don’t seem like pursuits that should hurt those around us.

Meanwhile, they help to make every day that much sweeter. And ever since I got my cancer diagnosis, that has been my goal: I want every day to be a good day.

Faced with my grim diagnosis, I’ve refused to be angry about my misfortune, or dwell on why I got unlucky, or rail about the years I won’t have. Why waste time on such emotions? Instead, my focus has been on making the most of the days I have left.

No, not every day has been happy. Life’s hassles have a way of intruding, and those hassles have grated even more because my time is short. Meanwhile, deteriorating health is obviously no fun.

On top of that, those around me have bad days, and their distress inevitably taints my waking hours. But I view this unhappiness differently. Unlike the hassle of leaking toilets or the distress of failing health, sadness—whether it’s our own or that of others—is part of the human experience, and adds a richness to it. With shared sadness, we can draw closer to others, and those tighter human connections can make life more meaningful.

Over the decades, I’ve written a lot about money and happiness, and yet “happiness” has always struck me as the wrong word, and academic alternatives like “subjective well-being” and “life satisfaction” don’t seem any better.

Yes, happiness is a key component of a good life, but it’s hardly the only one. Instead, robust happiness encompasses not just laughter and good times, but also feeling fulfilled, a sense of purpose, a passion for life, a sense of contentment, and a feeling we’re engaged with both others and with the broader world. It’s the sense we’re truly alive and focused on what we really want and care about. Such things, I believe, are always worth striving for—even when our time is measured not in decades, but in weeks and months.

Check out the earlier five articles in this six-part series: Money Grows up, Taking Center Stage, Mind Over Money, Taking It Personally and Never Enough.