How do we preserve a carefree zest for life?
Carefree zest for life: How often have we longed for this feeling when gray, everyday life with its big and small worries weighs us down? As a provider of royalty-free stock photography, conveying positive emotions is very important to us. So today let’s address the question: What is the oft-cited and longed-for joy for life? And is it possibly only a prerogative of youth? Or is this feeling instead a mental attitude that we have to acquire anew every day and at every age? After all, Pablo Picasso once said, “It takes a long time to grow young.”
Certainly, genuine joie de vivre is more than the superficial enjoyment of pleasant things and situations. It manifests itself in a positive attitude toward existing reality with all its ups and downs. It also includes the willingness to face those things that may come with calmness, confidence, and composure. This is an ability that most people acquire only in the course of their adult lives, when they have already weathered many a storm and gained life experience. So the older generation definitely has something to offer in terms of joie de vivre. Senior citizens are often no longer as carefree and cheerful as younger adults, but they have more insight and foresight – sometimes even wisdom.
See all the best images of joie de vivre on our pinboard.
Going through life with eyes wide open
But carefree zest for life does not mean closing our eyes to the pressing questions of our time and withdrawing into a cocoon of our own little ideal world. More and more people are realizing that we can no longer continue depleting nature as we have been doing. Advancing climate change with all its visible and not yet known consequences for humans and nature is a serious reminder to all of us to change course. Just think of the “eye of fire” in the Gulf of Mexico: Have we really gone so far as to let the sea go up in flames?
The young generation is raising its voice ever louder in protest against environmental destruction. How does this fit in with the unbridled joie de vivre, the unbridled optimism that is often attributed to young people? Are we no longer allowed to be cheerful because the bush is burning in Australia, the hole in the ozone layer is getting bigger and bigger, or because the sea level is continuing to rise due to the icecaps melting?
Being aware of the value of our basic resources
We suspect that zest for life is more than naive beaming grins, thoughtless consumption, and Heia popeia bliss. True joie de vivre also means looking ahead and realizing what we – and the generations to come – will lose if we continue to sacrifice our livelihoods on the pyre of the economic growth mantra. That is why the joy of life of the young can sometimes come across as loud and angry when they fear for their future.
This is not frustration with life, but quite the opposite, the fight for the zest for life, which in the end can only be enjoyed to the full in a healthy environment. Thus, the vociferous protest of the youth is merely the flip side and complement to the somewhat different joie de vivre of the elderly, which is fed by serenity and detachment – two sides of a precious coin that we should not gamble away – so that those who come after us can also enjoy their existence as often as they can.
Our pinboard of Lebensfreude – zest for life – is more than just a collection of images of good-humored people; it’s also a little reminder of what we need to preserve – no matter how young or old we are.
