When All You’Ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough – Harold Kushner Essay Example

and wise. He has arrived at the conclusion that being good and wise will not make you any better off than someone who is wicked and foolish, for all people have the same fate. Nevertheless, Ecclesiastes is not willing to give up on his search for meaning. This book “accompanies Ecclesiastes on five well-traveled paths that turned out to be dead ends, the way of selfishness and self-interest, the way of renouncing all bodily pleasures, the way of wisdom, the path of avoiding all feeling in an effort to avoid pain, and the path of piety and religious surrender.

”Although all of these paths failed to produce meaning, Ecclesiastes does discover an answer. He concludes that there is not one “Great Answer,” but rather many little answers that together give life meaning. He advises us that little things like food, wine, fresh clothes, and love are what we should find joy and happiness in. From this, Kushner elaborates to include us finding pleasure in our work, sunsets, and the change in seasons in order to “make each individual day a human experience.” Kushner later concludes that once you obtain satisfaction with what you have done with your life, you will no longer be afraid to die. Kushner’s ultimate conclusion and the thesis of this book is that the things that you must do in order to feel like you have lived your life well and not wasted it, are to belong to people, accept pain as part of your life, and know that you have made a difference.

Although this book was written to tell people how to live meaningful lives and not necessarily how to solve

ethical dilemmas, there are some ethical conclusions that can be drawn. This book implies that ethical egoists will not find satisfaction by looking out for their own self-interest. Kushner explains that when you are just looking out for yourself, you unknowingly see others as competitors. This competitive attitude will tend to separate you from other people.

When we become isolated, we become less human and are less able to enjoy our lives. We should instead try to develop healthy relationships with others by being as concerned about their feelings and needs as much as our own. This is not to say that an ethical egoist cannot be successful. They can, but if you become successful at the expense of everyone around you by always thinking of yourself and never of others, you will find yourself all alone.

And “one human being is no human being. ” Kushner’s closing thought in this book is that we feel better about ourselves when we are held to a high moral standard. This is because God created us so that when we follow our moral nature, we feel spiritually healthy. The ethical theory that ties in with this is the Divine Command Theory. Kushner claims that God’s commandments give our lives meaning and importance because they give us a purpose: to do His will. His moral standards also help us fulfill our own need to be good by showing us that God expects much of us.

Having God expect highly of us motivates us to live up to His standards. This is to our benefit because we tend to feel depressed and guilty when we don’t live moral lives.