It's always hard to tell what it means to truly live the good life. We have to experiment with our lives to try to figure out what flourishing would look like for us. I'm not particularly optimistic about flourishing myself, but still that is the aim. And then we have to balance things -- short term vs. long term, what we dream and what seems realistic, what's best for me individually, vs. what's good for all of us together, etc.

I'm a fan of the serenity prayer. But it sure isn't easy to tell what we can change and what we cannot, and to know whether we are wasting our resources or not. I find myself returning to some very basic issues over and over again and wondering if anything has really changed. Reminding me of a poster a professor once showed me:

We may still be confused, but we are confused at a higher level than we used to be.