Essential Question Response #9

I couldn't decide what I should write for this response, and as I pondered the idea behind an essential question, I realized that it was a way for us to see how we can better our own lives. So I decided to use this thought as my essential question, which is:
How can we better our lives?
The first step in bettering our lives is defining what exactly that is. When people think of having a "better" life, some people believe that this is found through love, others think it involves helping others, while others believe it is about finding morals to base your actions off of. Despite everyone having a different opinion on what they can do to better their life, every single one of these ideas are connected by a single similarity; they all make that person happy. Whether you derive joy from the burning passion for a lover, the bubbling euphoria of donating a toy to an orphan, or the satisfying thought of purpose that comes from the belief in a greater being, you are finding a way to be happy, so my definition for bettering our lives is finding a path in life that allows you to be happy and relish every second of it.
Now it is very easy to criticize my definition. You can say that our own happiness has nothing to do with bettering our lives. You can bring up dictators, such as Hitler, who massacred many innocent people just to satisfy their sick idea of joy. How can doing something so horrible be considered as bettering your life? Well as much I am against the thought of killing out of joy, the fact remains that those people are bettering their own lives, with little regard to others. They grew up under different circumstances from the norm, and as a result, have different ideas of happiness. This thought applies to the saviors throughout history as well, such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., who sacrificed a lot to help many people because it made them feel joy that their lives had a purpose. It is only the morals that they were raised with that allowed them to find joy in helping others. These circumstances are the reason we all have such different ideas of bettering our lives.
So as you live each day, searching for a way to better your life, just think of what would make you happy and pursue it until you die.