{"id":1432,"date":"2016-05-30T14:34:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T14:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/lorna15\/?p=161"},"modified":"2016-05-30T14:34:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T14:34:00","slug":"challenge-of-the-week-a-good-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/2016\/05\/30\/challenge-of-the-week-a-good-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenge of the Week: ‘A good life’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Well, my time is nearly done but I’ve had a good innings’, ‘I think I’ve had a good life’, ‘I’ve tried my best, do you think I’ve had a good life?’<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Recently\u00a0a conversation with an elderly patient got me thinking. She was quite old with lots of chronic medical conditions, and whilst chatting she turned to me and was very honest- ‘I haven’t got long left, but I’ve had a good life’.<\/p>\n

It’s a conversation I’ve had before, but once again I was challenged. It’s a phrase we commonly use but what makes someone have a ‘good life’ or a ‘good innings’?<\/p>\n

Is it based on achievements, life span, health, family, reputation or something else?<\/p>\n

Would you say that a terminal 30 year old Nobel prize winner had had a ‘good innings’? What about a homeless, unemployed 90 year old? I guess it comes down to what you value most in life. The more I think about it, the more I am challenged now- what would enable you to say you lived a ‘good life’, and how does your behaviour now reflect that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which I am challenged as to what makes a good life…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1044,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185196,1],"tags":[188069],"class_list":["post-1432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challenge-of-the-week","category-uncategorized","tag-life-and-death"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1044"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}