Let things and men go to their respective places. This is really about you. You are not tempered yet. Other fires must still overcome you. You should still learn to enjoy your solitude. That is what you want from others, isn’t it? You wanted to ease the other’s solitude? You wanted to escape your solitude. That’s it. (Carl Jung, The Black Books)

What is good life?

It depends on what we judge as being valuable for us. Or, so as to put it differently, a good life is achieved when someone lives his or her own values in a satisfactory manner. Or, when what someone lives is aligned with what is considered valuable or goes towards the maximization of the things that are seen as valuable in life.

But how we choose what is valuable for us? How do we select from many possible values the ones that are the most important for us? Why some people choose adventure, while others choose family and others choose financial security? Why almost similar children, who have an almost similar start in life, will choose different things as being valuable?

Sometimes it is the heredity. Sometimes it’s the education received in the family. And sometimes there are traumatic events that shape our choices. And, finally, sometimes we don’t know why we choose what we choose.

Why is it so important to have a social media presence on the internet and share texts, photos and videos about your life? Why you need to constantly update the entire universe about your thoughts, your feelings or the places you have visited?

Is it a silent need for social life that cannot be achieved otherwise, in a different manner? In other words, is it solitude? Or it’s a need for attention from others, to feel important and valuable?

Or, is it being in the spotlight and having an audience & followers a disguised need for love that can only be expressed as a need for attention?

Why having a public presence on the internet has become something valuable and, consequently, a successful online profile is a sign of good life?

Why satisfying one’s craving for attention, and ultimately for love, is a sign of good life?

If good life requires so much love, if love has such a great value for so many people, what can we say about the amount of love received during childhood? How huge was the deprivation? Because we typically crave what we never had or we had in very little amount…

A good childhood and a good life as a child does not usually create adults craving for attention. Something has happened decades ago. And the obsession with the social media today is only a solution to a deeper and older problem.

A solution that does not lead to a better life. Why? Because attention comes and goes. And because attention depends on the availability and choices of other people. In other words, our happiness depends on the caprices of others.

Just like drinking alcohol does not solve anything and only alleviates the psychological suffering, the internet in excess tricks us into believing that good life comes closer to us with each new follower and each new “like”. But, just like the alcohol intoxication, the good moments are brief and ephemeral.