{"id":6220,"date":"2019-02-26T13:46:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T18:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=6220"},"modified":"2019-02-26T13:46:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T18:46:46","slug":"the-good-enough-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2019\/02\/26\/the-good-enough-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good-Enough Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/core\/files\/2019\/02\/odysseus3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/core\/files\/2019\/02\/odysseus3-300x277.jpg\" alt=\"odysseus3\" width=\"300\" height=\"277\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-6224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/files\/2019\/02\/odysseus3-300x277.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/files\/2019\/02\/odysseus3.jpg 354w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As Er watches dead souls choose new lives in Plato&#8217;s Myth of Er, he is surprised to see Odysseus chooses a life of a farmer. Instead of another life of greatness and fame, he chooses the middle path of an ordinary man.<\/p>\n<p>Many thinkers and characters strive for greatness, and some even manage to achieve it (Core is a &#8220;Great Books&#8221; program, after all). But as Avram Alpert writes in his award winning op-ed, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/20\/opinion\/the-good-enough-life-philosophy.html?fallback=0&amp;recId=1HdXQOT5vFNVI6RvSUvwiUHyY25&amp;locked=0&amp;geoContinent=NA&amp;geoRegion=NJ&amp;recAlloc=home&amp;geoCountry=US&amp;blockId=home-living-vi&amp;imp_id=180669765&amp;action=click&amp;module=Smarter%20Living&amp;pgtype=Homepage\">greatness is not necessarily good.<\/a> While the good-enough life may not lead to fame and fortune, learning to seek the good is learning to find happiness where you are.<\/p>\n<p>You may not be immortalized by the gods, but if you can enjoy little things like some good coffee, a book, or some unseasonably warm weather, you may be better off than Odysseus in the long run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Er watches dead souls choose new lives in Plato&#8217;s Myth of Er, he is surprised to see Odysseus chooses a life of a farmer. Instead of another life of greatness and fame, he chooses the middle path of an ordinary man. Many thinkers and characters strive for greatness, and some even manage to achieve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[898,3857,2534,1],"tags":[48818,44960,48819,4218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6220"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6226,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220\/revisions\/6226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}