From a post over at Lifehack.org…

My partner is taking a class in psychology and one assignment asks her to write a paper answering the question “What makes life worth living?”

For the past few days, she’s been asking the people around her – kids, friends, co-workers – what they think makes life worth living, and the answers have been pretty much of a sort: family, friends, work, music, some possession or other, faith, maybe health. Computer games.

And the writer goes on to point out that most people who are answering the question are prone to answer by mentioning possessions, things. And he goes on, rather cogently, I might add, to talk about how those things really relate to behaviors.

For my part, though, I think the premise of the assignment the writer’s partner was given is a false one. Oh, sure, it’s probably a good way to force a student to think hard and flex their logic muscles, but it’s not necessarily a valuable question.

The opposite of the question being analyzed is this: What makes life not worth living? Which is, on the whole, a much more depressing theme, requiring one to consider a seemingly endless list of tragic and desperate situations.

Camus stated that the only question of philosophy that matters is suicide. Whether you believe that to be a bold, shocking, or obvious assertion, he had a point. What’s the point of living when the future holds only deterioration and death? If you’re miserable now, and tomorrow can only promise greater misery, then why continue on?

The total absence of hope is despair; and it’s often despair that drives suicides to their final ends. If we know that despair makes life not worth living, then then doesn’t that give us a clue as to the answer of the original question?

Yes, but the answer is a little broad: Lack of despair makes life worth living. Transitively, (if we can apply such logic to language) the lack of despair is, therefore, what we call "hope" (that thing with feathers, &c).

So, what makes life worth living? Hope. Right?

Well, maybe.

All you evolutionary biologists can mock me if you like, but one imagines that one of the prosperities of life is that it generally strives to continue living. So, however indifferent you might think you are towards your own existence, hunger will try to force you to eat, fatigue will try to force you to sleep; intense discomfort is trying to keep you alive. And, all things being equal, for a lot of people with the resources to read productivity websites (and who are also not in the grip of despair), the path of least resistance, in most cases, is to go on living.

But that’s just inertia, just giving in to biological imperatives. You can be miserable, convinced that life isn’t worth living, and yet, continue to live because the discomfort of suicide or fear of death keeps you from acting on your convictions.

Take away hope — for your family, your children, your partner, yourself, and for all of mankind — and then the question becomes whether or not you are smart enough to outwit your biology, and conquer your fear of non-existence, or Hell, or what have you.

So, what makes life worth living?

Hope.