This isn't art-related but, help, I am confused! Were any of you brought up on Disney movies—The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, etc.? I definitely was, I must admit. I watched The Little Mermaid two or three times a day sometimes….

In those movies, there is the common theme of refusing to settle. If there’s more to be gotten out of life, the main character does whatever it takes to get what he/she wants. For example, in The Little Mermaid, she isn’t happy with just living under the sea; she wants to become a human, despite her father’s fury. So she does. And she finds her happily ever after. Beauty and the Beast begins with Belle’s song about “there must be more than this provincial life.” Aladdin is about his dream to live in the sultan’s castle. There’s more, but I’ll spare you my endless lists. In short, all of these characters only achieved what they wanted because they weren’t satisfied with what they had.

So where’s the line between being unsatisfied with what you have and thus being greedy about what life has to offer, and allowing that dissatisfaction to help you achieve what you really want out of life? In my philosophy class this summer, we talked about Mill and here’s a quote from him that bothers me: “Happiness…[is] not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.”

So what is life capable of bestowing? Where’s that line between wanting more and just enjoying what you have?



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