Author: Aaron
On 2012, OECD has established a web tool "Your Better Life" (
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/)for users to weight and recalculate every country well-being situation according to their own ideas. It's obviously just because everyone has different ideas about what happiness should be.
Nowadays, especially in Taiwan, we face the reality: there are growing anxieties in our society: teenagers struggle for the counterproductive academic competition, college graduates fight with unemployment and low-salary jobs; young couples worry about the cost of living such like house mortgage and children's education expenses. To deal with the anxieties, it should be centered on sort of dilemma, which refer that they should make their own decisions and sacrifice their some choices, such like marriage.
The dilemma of live should be quite normal around the world, however, they significantly bring about unhappiness of most of people in Taiwan. It is largely because there is only one value in Taiwan society. As I said above, happiness should every different for every individuals, but in most of cases, our happiness depend on how the others think. Teenagers should enter selective colleges, college graduates should get so-called "white coat" jobs, and young couples should have babies to meet some others' expectations. That said, they often could not make choices. What they could do is following others' thought, or it's possible that they will be considered "unhappy" or "losers."
So, the question is, how to find out other family or social vales for every individuals to choose. Take marriage for example, it is the combination of ideas and realities. Fail to take both of them into consideration, we will lose the whole picture of life. It contains positive side, such like family affection, but also negative side and makes it impossible for you to pursuit the original self-centered life goals. That is, people should make their own decisions whether others think it is good or not. What they have to do is realizing what they want and who they want to be.
It often complicated and controversial when it comes to choices. Think about the philosophy of "Your Better Life", your can depict different visions of your life and make your own choices independently.