HAPPINESS: MEASUREMENT OF LIFE

Inspired recently by the conversations with people with whome I work (re-thinking pharmaceutical development), together with the writings of Immanual Kant – What is enlightenment? (1784) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall… ) and Santayana George Santayna – The Sense of Beauty – Being the  Outlines of Aesthetic Theory (1896) –  I was inspired to write a poem which I share below.  As  Clayton M. Christensen reminds us in his article ‘How Will You Measure Your Life? HBR July 2010‘ we all need to consider ‘what is happiness for us?’ Yet in the words of Kant there is a caution  ‘Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! “Have courage to use your own reason!”- that is the motto of enlightenment.”   Clayton M. Christensen in his article ‘How Will You Measure Your Life? HBR July 2010‘ appears, paradoxically, to be saying is that even the most successful are trapped in a ‘self-imposed tutelage’, and only a few appear to reach a different place!  On reading this article I saw resonances with the words of Clayton in my own poem AESTHETIC UNIFORMITY: BEAUTY BEHELD. Like beauty, happiness is all round us – if we look in the right places and pay attention to the right things!