I wanted to tell you a beautiful little book written by the great philosopher Paul Kurtz, "Affirmations", (2005), which shows the principles of humanism related to happiness and well-being.

The fullness of life is reached when we are able to realize (actualization) our own nature, obtaining pleasure as a by-product, in the course of a lifetime. The joyful and creative exuberance is intimately related to the love for life, with what Erich Fromm called "biophilia", with the passionate desire to preserve life, take it to its highest value and live passionately, with joy and excitement, intensely , engaged in creative entrepreneurial and adventure activities. Kurtz links these aspirations with a certain degree of nobility, perfectibility of a person's talents, finding life intensely valuable and worthy of being lived. It implies a flowering of the personality, respecting what we are, without belittling ourselves, based on the unconditional acceptance of ourselves, expressing the fullness and richness of living.

Kurtz affirms that this is possible when we are able to realize our desires, aspirations, talents and dreams, and when we are able to share the benefits of life with others, with those we love or relate to, reaching a high and noble degree of moral development, recognizing the needs of others, an authentic desire to relate to them, to love and be loved, even making sacrifices for their welfare if necessary.

This flowering of life in ourselves and in others is possible to achieve when we search for what is expressed in the three words that begin with "e": "excellence", "eudomonia", Greek term for happiness, well-being or human flowering and "exuberance" and also by five words that begin with "c": "character": "cognition", "courage", "creativity" and "care".

For Kurtz, the person who has developed and matured, has developed a reflexive attitude that allows him to locate the sufferings and setbacks of life in a broader context, compensating the difficulties focusing on all those times in which he could face and overcome them, finding life to be worthy of being lived, finding value in art, science, philosophy, love, romance, laughter and creative enjoyment, the time in which we persevere and prevailed.

Kurtz compares our life as a work of art, with its shades and shadows, colors and shapes, contrasts and highlights, showing stoicism in periods of anxiety, hoping to find more creative and happy experiences, to compensate for the bad and tragic, positive and negative, optimism before pessimism.

The creative person can make a summary of his life and declare that despite all the suffering and everything tragic, life is worth living, despite the mistakes, the regrets for what we did or did not do , or what could have been and was not, and declare that yes, although there have been periods of pain and grief, were compensated by periods of joy and creative enjoyment and that life was and is an adventure and that we are fortunate to have lived it .

References:
Kurtz, Paul. Affirmations: Joyful and Creative Exuberance Revised Edition (Prometheus Books, 2005).