After reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, I find I must disagree with one small section:
[A] boy is not happy; for he is not yet capable of such acts, owing to his age; and boys who are called happy are being congratulated by reason of the hopes we have for them. For there is required, as we said, not only complete virtue but also a complete life, since many changes occur in life, and all manner of chances, and the most prosperous may fall into great misfortunes in old age, as is told of Priam in the Trojan Cycle; and one who has experienced such chances and has ended wretchedly no one calls happy.
Book 1, Chapter 9
Are we then to dismiss children that die so young as never being happy, never achieving the ultimate good of happiness? Especially those whose lives are destroyed by cancer at such a tender young age?
No. I believe not. These children may have circumstances working against them and may never see adulthood, but that does not mean they do not have a full, complete life. When I was in junior high, we had a student relapse. He had been a miracle child, beating the odds and beating leukemia. He lived to see his teen years, something his parents were told was an impossibility. He spent his time outside of school active in the community and church, and during school hours, he wrote for the school newsletter. The school allowed him a column where he discussed his life, answered questions about his religious beliefs, and gave encouragement to those in need. It was through this newsletter he changed lives. He was just a kid, but he had a voice and he shared it with the school. He believed that his purpose in life was to help as many people as he could, to reach as many students as he could, and enrich the lives of as many people as he could. I never knew him, but I mourned with the rest of the school when he announced in May that the cancer was back, and I cried with the rest of the school when we returned in August to find he had passed on just a few weeks prior. Through the halls, before school, amongst the tears, students were sharing what they had learned from him, how he had changed their attitudes towards their parents, or their minds about running away, or how he had helped them understand some small detail about life. This child, this young man, never saw adulthood, and yet he lived a purpose; he was himself a man at peace with the world, and he passed on what he could. He lived a fulfilling, albeit short, life, which I would consider a good life, a virtuous life, a happy life.
While this student was an older student, and had lived longer than expected, I would still argue that even a younger child can live a fulfilling life of happiness. I propose that a child strives for ultimate happiness on a subconscious level, which can be considered the child’s soul’s desire for happiness. For example, my cousin’s daughter is only nine years old and was diagnosed with a brain tumor just before Thanksgiving of last year. Her parents were told she would never see her next birthday, which she celebrated in February. She has been an exceptionally easy child, laughing through the treatments, the sickness from the radiation, the loss of her sight, and the loss of her hair. She doesn’t even cry and bemoan the loss of her friends. What she does do, however, is fight the doctors to get clearance to return to school full time – not because she misses her friends, but because she misses school. She wants to learn. When she won the right to return to school part time, she rejoiced and started making plans for college. A child still, already planning her college days! I have shared her journey with people I know purely through the internet and we all agree that she is an inspiration to the world to never give up, to never let life get you down, and to never stop learning. Her desire to learn is, in my mind, her personal reach for good, which could be considered her subconscious urge to do good to gain happiness. She is only nine, and the odds are against her ever living to see adulthood, but we should not dismiss her life because she is so young. She is not actively pushing and changing society the way my fellow junior high student did, but does that make her any less of a productive person? Does that negate the virtuous life she has lived thus far and may yet do before she is taken from us?
