Measuring a Life
Life and a fair gage of its value may exist of a few concurrent axes. I find one of the easier ways to assess these more philosophical concerns is through a somewhat mathematical analogy. In looking to define a well-lived life, there is an obvious first "axis" which I call "micro-life" or the life into oneself. Micro-life is the personal feeling of happiness or satisfaction a person feels from the happenings and state of their life. This is the life closest to the ground floor. It's a worthy goal, to be able to look in the mirror and be happy. For the sake of argument, let's pretend this exists on a single path, a line from dissatisfied to satisfied.
The first axis of a life well lived is personal.
The second axis, perhaps "macro-life," is the influence one's life has on others and the course of human existence. This is difficult to distill down to a simple line but the analogy is useful for us in other more helpful ways. Contrary to some beliefs in pop-psychophilosophy, pursuing an impactful life and pursuing a happy life are not the same thing. I'd venture to say they are not even linked. Rather, they are perpendicular affairs. One may have both, neither, or some combination with different emphasis. This axis traces out roughly how constructive or destructive ones life has been. A life with no impact, falls dead center on the chart and does not deal in this dimension. A life that contributes positively or negatively to the world around them, gains two-dimensionality.
The second axis is a bit more complex but definitively unlinked from "satisfaction"
The third axis is the most difficult for me to put compellingly into words. Trying to describe it I lose clarity, as though it's description demands vagueness. I can almost guarantee this means I'm missing something about it so this will need periodic revisits, to see if age and experience brings any clarity to the point. As placeholders, a variety of titles can imperfectly capture this measure of life: vision, ethos, spirit, or what "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" calls "quality." This axis refers to the depth of life lived. Not what happened but how much it happened. When Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter tells Alice, "You're not the same as you were before. You were much more... muchier... you've lost your muchness," he is referring to this final almost inexplicable axis. A person very here in life can interact and ripple out into the fabric of history and culture and lives in a deep way. Distinct from what they contribute, people with a high degree of this quality reverberate through life as beings themselves. They are the people that, as Steve Jobs said, "put a dent in the Universe." And this too exists on a spectrum, like a chemical reaction, a person may radiate this energy out, contributing their muchness to others, or they may sap and drain the quality of others, dragging vision down into slogging bogs of drab inaction.
The third axis nearly defies definition but has the most notable oomph when encountered. You'll know when someone exists in either direction on this line.
The measure of a life lived fully is a strong dimensionality in whatever direction on this chart. Even those in negative quadrants have achieved a place for themselves, an interesting-ness. Given how fluid these ends are, it's very likely that being far towards one end of an axis can be positive for some and negative when viewed upside down. We have enough perspectives to view just about any axis upside down. The only thing that is uniformly uncompelling is the 0-dimensionals, those who stake out no position anywhere along any line.