What Makes for a Good Life?

I met Barbara at a conference about advocacy a couple of weeks ago. Barbara volunteers to be an advocate for a young woman with learning disabilities - she does this because she is unsettled, she knows that all is not well in this young woman's life, she feels compelled to be there.

Barbara very kindly sent me a book and a letter following our meeting - I commend it to you because it is thought provoking and layered. 'People with Intellectual Disabilities; Towards a Good Life' by Kelly Johnson, Jan Walmsley and Marie Wolfe.

Martin Seligman, a leading light in positive psychology who wrote Authentic Happiness ends his book by reflecting on three kinds of life - the pleasurable life, the good life and the meaningful life and wonders if happiness at a deeper level is derived from a life imbued with meaning - some of the features being around awareness, contribution, compassion, and self development.

I am noticing that the models and schemas that have been deployed, largely by non disabled people to transform the lives of those who live with learning disabilities may serve more to re-inforce the separation than to create something new and good, something than means each unique life is respected.

In the UK we are urged to 'Value People Now'.

Barbara is doing this as she seeks to know what a good life is for one woman who lives nearby. Barbara has assets, she is articulate, curious and energetic. She is adding meaning to her own life by asking questions about the life of this young woman.

Perhaps this is the only way to really know that you are valued - when people want to be with you, to know and understand you, to figure out what a good life looks, sounds and feels like for you. Some of us are blessed by this kind of life - reciprocity and exchange. Many are not.

Thankyou to Barbara for her kindness and refusal to accept a life in which people who share the place she lives are expected to settle for something less than a good life.

Andy