We want to live better lives. We work harder, try to earn more, and do our best to create better conditions for ourselves. We imagine that once we have everything in order, we will finally be able to relax, make time for ourselves, and enjoy life. But when that day comes, new goals often appear. We keep moving forward, caught in an endless state of preparation, without noticing when we began postponing the act of living itself.
Yet life is not something that begins only when all our tasks are complete. They never really are. One thing follows another; as one wish comes true, another takes its place. Years pass, and we are still trying to finish one more thing before we can finally live a little better.
Perhaps before asking how to build a better life, we should ask what a good life actually means to us.
The French expression art de vivre, the art of living, brings this question to mind. Good food, beautiful tables, little cafés, long conversations, and the pleasure of everyday life… But if living well simply means possessing these things, we may find ourselves creating yet another shopping list in pursuit of the perfect life.
Perhaps we need to go further back, to a garden in Athens, to a philosopher who reflected on human happiness, and to a question that is easy to forget: What do we really need?
Around 306 BCE, Epicurus established his philosophical school in a house and garden in Athens. The garden, which would eventually become a symbol of his philosophy as well as a physical place, was not a monument to great wealth or an extravagant lifestyle. Epicurus and his companions gathered there to discuss philosophy, form friendships, and reflect on how to live.
For Epicurus, philosophy was not merely an exercise in abstract thought. It was meant to help people understand their fears and anxieties and live with greater peace of mind. What good is an idea if it changes nothing in our lives?
For him, happiness was less a magnificent goal to be reached than a matter of the quality of our relationship with life itself. We could learn what we truly needed, which desires were worth pursuing, and what needlessly disturbed our peace.
Even today, we often know what we want without giving much thought to why we want it. A better home, more money, nicer clothes, more travel, a wider social circle… Each of these things may add something to our lives. But how do we know that having them all will necessarily make us happy?
Epicurus was not asking us to despise what we possess. He was asking whether we had tied our happiness to an endless succession of new conditions.
That was the meaning of the Garden: a place where people did not have to prove themselves to others, where they could make time for friendship and reflection, and where they could question together what it meant to live well.
Perhaps we all need to retreat to our own gardens from time to time. Not to escape the world entirely, but to distinguish between what the world expects of us and what we genuinely want.
Epicurus is sometimes associated with unlimited pleasure, lavish feasts, and indulgence. Yet his understanding of happiness was quite different from the idea of pursuing every desire.
For Epicurus, pleasure was central to a good life. But not all pleasures were equal. Some could bring greater distress in their wake, and the cost of fulfilling certain desires could outweigh what we gained from them. Learning to recognize our desires and distinguish between them was therefore essential.
Think of something we have wanted to buy for a long time. At first, it occupies our attention completely. Eventually, it becomes an ordinary part of our lives. Then we want something else. Something newer, better, more beautiful…
This cycle may never end. Sometimes we are pursuing not the thing itself, but the feeling we imagine having it will bring us. That feeling fades, and we set another goal in the hope of experiencing the same excitement again.
Epicurus broadly divided desires into three categories: natural and necessary desires, natural but unnecessary desires, and empty or groundless desires. Food, water, and shelter belong to the first category. Fine food, for instance, may be a natural pleasure without being a necessity. The pursuit of unlimited wealth, fame, and power, meanwhile, can draw us into a cycle of endless wanting.
The point is not that we should give up beautiful things. The real question is the difference between enjoying a pleasure and believing that we cannot be happy without it.
Good food is a pleasure. But if we can only consider life good when we can afford to eat in expensive restaurants, we have confined our happiness to a very narrow space. Travel can open up new worlds to us. But treating life as though it has not truly been lived whenever we cannot travel is another matter.
There is a fine line between wanting something and feeling that we need it. What we desire may add colour to our lives; when we believe we cannot do without it, we hand over to it the power to determine how colourful our lives can be.
Sometimes freedom does not mean having everything we want. It means no longer feeling constantly incomplete because of what we do not have.
Stories about Epicurus enjoying simple food offer an interesting glimpse into his understanding of pleasure. The point is not so much what a philosopher ate, but why he believed that simplicity could bring satisfaction.
A piece of bread, some cheese, water, and a meal shared with friends… What makes such a meal special is not the price or grandeur of the table. When we satisfy our needs and enjoy what we eat, we do not necessarily have to feel deprived because we lack something more. Finding pleasure in small things can help protect us from becoming dependent on greater and greater pleasures.
A coffee with a friend we have not seen for a long time may stay with us longer than an expensive dinner. A simple meal prepared from whatever happens to be in the kitchen can be unexpectedly satisfying. A sentence we come across in a book can change the course of our entire day.
None of these things needs to be extraordinary. Perhaps their beauty lies precisely in their ordinariness.
For Epicurus, friendship was also one of the foundations of a good life. It was not merely a way to pass the time or entertain ourselves; it was an essential part of a secure and peaceful existence.
With a true friend, we do not constantly have to prove ourselves. We do not always need to appear successful, cheerful, strong, or interesting. Sometimes we have a great deal to say; sometimes we simply sit together and drink our coffee. The value of a relationship lies not in how impressive our shared activities look, but in the place we occupy in each other’s lives.
We cannot build a good life entirely on our own. Making our own decisions and standing on our own feet matter, of course. But we also need people we can trust, people with whom we can share our happiness and who will stand beside us when life becomes difficult.
The beauty of a garden comes not only from its trees. It also depends on whom we sit there with.
When we think of the French art of living, we often picture little cafés, market shopping, good bread, cheese, coffee, long meals, and conversation. Part of this image reflects cultural habits; part comes from the romantic ideas we have formed about France. It would be impossible to assume that every French person lives in the same way. And art de vivre is not the name of a single philosophical doctrine. It is a broad idea of living that has been interpreted in different ways across different periods.
Still, the concept suggests something worth considering: life is not made up solely of goals to be achieved.
Lunch can become more than a task to get out of the way. A coffee can become a moment that belongs to the day, rather than a drink consumed while doing something else. Shopping at a market can mean more than replacing what has run out; it can be an opportunity to discover seasonal produce and enjoy the process of preparing food.
There is no need to claim a direct historical connection between Epicurus and the French approach to living. They belong to different times and circumstances. Yet both can lead us toward the same question: Do we need more in order to enjoy life, or do we need to change our relationship with what is already here?
Good food, a carefully prepared table, and a beautiful place to sit are certainly among life's pleasures. But when we turn them into expensive accessories of a lifestyle, living well can become another status to achieve.
The secret of the art of living may lie not in spending money to make everything beautiful, but in developing the attention needed to notice beauty.
Sometimes that attention appears in the taste of a meal, sometimes in a conversation, and sometimes in an afternoon spent sitting quietly and doing nothing at all. The point is not to turn every moment into a special experience. Trying to make every moment special can itself become exhausting.
Sometimes allowing an ordinary day to remain ordinary is part of living well.
It sometimes feels as though we all have a life waiting to begin. Once this job is finished, once I have saved some money, once the children have grown up, once I retire, once I move to a different home, once this difficult period has passed… Then I will make time for myself. I will read more, travel more, and see my friends more often.
Sometimes these really are necessary conditions. People may be unable to live as they wish while facing financial hardship, caring responsibilities, or demanding working conditions. Living well is not merely a matter of attitude; material circumstances and available opportunities also shape our lives. It would be unfair to offer everyone the same prescription or tell people to be happy regardless of their circumstances.
Still, there is a difference between conditions we can change and everything we keep waiting to change.
Sometimes we have no choice but to wait for things to improve. At other times, waiting becomes a habit. We believe that our lives will begin one day, while using the present only as a means of reaching that future.
This is where Epicurus' philosophy becomes meaningful again. Understanding our desires, refusing to tie happiness to an endless list of conditions, and confronting the fears that disturb our peace were all important parts of his approach to a good life.
Perhaps the simplest question we can ask ourselves is this: What, among the things I already have, brings me genuine happiness?
This question does not prevent us from wanting something better. We can continue to seek a better home, learn something new, move to another country, or change our lives. But while doing so, we do not have to forget that today is also a day worth living.
Living well does not mean creating a life in which everything goes right. Sometimes it means maintaining our connection with life even when things do not go as planned.
What remains of Epicurus' Garden is more than the story of an ancient philosophical school. His reflections on desire, friendship, pleasure, and peace still offer us a starting point from which to question our own lives.
How much do we really need? What do we give up while pursuing the things we believe will make us happy? How much room do we leave in our lives for friendship, rest, and small pleasures that do not need to serve any practical purpose?
We cannot simply find the answers in a philosopher's book and apply them directly to our lives. Everyone's circumstances and needs are different. Something one person can easily give up may be essential to another. Nor is a simple life an option that everyone is equally free to choose.
But it is possible to consider what we might change within the limits of our own circumstances.
Perhaps we call a friend we have not spoken to in a long time. Perhaps we stop waiting for a special occasion to prepare a good meal. Perhaps we question whether something we want to buy is truly necessary. Or perhaps we allow ourselves an hour of our own time without feeling guilty for not doing something else.
None of these things will transform our lives overnight. That is not the point.
We do not arrive at the end of this reflection on Epicurus' Garden and the art of living with a grand formula for happiness. Perhaps we arrive at a better question: While constantly adding things in an attempt to make our lives better, how much of the beauty that is already there do we actually notice?
Living well does not mean having a beautiful day every day or possessing everything we want. Sometimes it means learning what is worth pursuing, what needlessly exhausts us, and which small things genuinely enrich our lives.
Not every problem was solved in Epicurus' Garden. But the act of thinking about how to live well was not excluded from life itself.
Perhaps that is what we need a little more of today: instead of waiting for everything to be finished before our lives can begin, finding a small garden of our own within the life that is already unfolding.
A table, a book we love, a good coffee, a meal shared with friends, or a moment of happiness we do not have to explain to anyone…
Perhaps the art of living begins not with having more, but with learning what genuinely makes life better for us.
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