The first approach to a definition of well-being can be stated thus: well-being is being in accord with the nature of man. If we go beyond this formal statement the question arises: What is being, in accordance with the conditions of human existence? What are these conditions?
Human existence poses a question. Man is thrown into this world without his volition, and taken away from it again without his volition In contrast to the animal, which in its instincts has a "built-in" mechanism of adaptation to its environment, living completely within nature, man lacks this instinctive mechanism. He has to live his life, he is not lived by it. He is in nature, yet he transcends nature; he has awareness of himself, and this awareness of himself as a separate entity makes him feel unbearably alone, lost, powerless. The very fact of being born poses a problem. At the moment of birth, life asks man a question, and this question he must answer. He must answer it at every moment; not his mind, not his body, but he, the person who thinks and dreams, who sleeps and eats and cries and laughs-the whole man-must answer it. What is this question which life poses? The question is: How can we overcome the suffering, the imprisonment, the shame which the experience of separateness creates; how can we find union within ourselves, with our fellow man, with nature? Man has to answer this question in some way; and even in insanity an answer is given by striking out reality outside of ourselves, living completely within the shell of ourselves, and thus overcoming the fright of separateness.
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