抄録
The 2020 Cabinet Office survey on 'Trends in Well-being in Japan' revealed little convincing information beyond the finding that younger generations reported lower 'life satisfaction. ' This highlights the challenge of defining well-being, as it is a state denoted by the '-ing' suffix, making it as elusive to define as 'music. ' To gain a deeper understanding of well-being, I explored the concept of human existence in the 'here and now. ' My investigation revealed that humans live by continuously progressing from past to present to future, experiencing, thinking, choosing, self-determining, and expressing themselves in the intervals between. This process necessitates individual will, with education and learning serving as the arena for these experiences. In this paper, I examined episodes from music therapy to explore the importance of actively living between dichotomies such as pleasure/displeasure and good/bad, drawing on various theories of developmental psychology. While I was unable to reach a definitive conclusion about well-being, the findings suggest the importance of existing in the space between 'well' and 'ill,' holding universal values necessary for living in the present, and actively pursuing well-being to connect with future generations.
