What I mean is what makes our lives good and worth living. So I think it would have to be 1a.
Now I am also going to continue on here with something else important for you to respond to here as well. All good messages have an uplifting and optimistic tone, all bad messages have the opposite tone (such as somber and depressing which would be negative tones), while neutral messages have neutral tones. This is something that is always true. If you were to have an uplifting and optimistic tone towards something bad in your life such as: "Excellent, I have something bad in my life which is cancer," then this would be false. You are not having that tone towards that message. Instead, it is towards a different message (a good message). Those other good messages could be you inspiring others to move on with their lives who also have cancer. Or maybe something is bad in your life and you thought it was a good thing to have cancer in order to give yourself the excuse to end your life in order to escape from that said bad thing in your life. But the bad things in your life were never good in of themselves and they never had an uplifting and optimistic tone towards them. It was only the good messages from those bad things that had this tone.
So for people who have uplifting and optimistic tones towards pain and suffering in their lives, it is only towards the good things that can come from this suffering to them. Otherwise, if there was nothing good that could come from this suffering for these people, then they would not have this tone towards their suffering. Our moods (emotions) are the only things that dictate our tones in life. If you feel unpleasant emotions, then you are going to have a negative tone and if you feel pleasant emotions, then you are going to have a positive tone. But if you feel neither pleasant nor unpleasant emotions, then you are going to have a neutral tone. But if you had a positive tone while feeling nothing but depression, then this would make no sense and it would be no different than having a negative tone while feeling intense pleasure (excitement). It is our pleasant and unpleasant feelings that define the good and bad value in our lives and it is also the good and bad value messages (thoughts) that give us good and bad feelings. They are two sides of the same coin and define one another in our personal lives. One cannot exist without the other.
Therefore, for you to have a negative tone towards something bad in your life while you are feeling nothing but pleasure (excitement), then this cannot be and makes no sense. That bad thing in your life would actually have a neutral tone towards it since you are neither feeling pleasure nor suffering associated with that bad thing. You are only feeling pleasure (excitement) towards something good in your life at the moment. So if you were to have a negative tone while feeling nothing but pleasure, then it would be forced (faked) and not genuine. If you were to achieve a positive tone during your depression, then it would only be because there was a moment during your depression in which you were able to experience feelings of pleasure. Same holds true for feeling excited in that there would be a moment in which you felt suffering if you were to have a negative tone.
But moods in which you feel neither pleasure nor suffering should always have neutral tones. If you were to choose to have a negative tone or a positive tone during these moods, then you are only faking (forcing) this tone and it is not a genuine tone. Same thing applies if you had a negative tone while feeling nothing but pleasure or having a positive tone while feeling nothing but suffering. Therefore, since it is only our moods (feelings of pleasure, feeling of suffering, or neither) that dictate the perceived good value, bad value, and neutral value in our lives, then this would mean that only our feelings of pleasure make our lives good and worth living, feelings of suffering make our lives bad and not worth living, while feeling neither pleasure nor suffering give neutral value to our lives and does not make our lives worth living. So if a person who feels neither pleasure nor suffering chooses to make the best of this life, help others, and live for their family, then they are only forcing themselves to do so because they think it is the right thing to do. But here again, it is not a genuine good value in this person's life at all without his/her feelings of pleasure and they have no reason to live. They are only fooling themselves and just forcing themselves to live.
They are fooling themselves into thinking there are good things and good messages he/she can live by when, in fact, there is nothing actually being perceived as good and worth living for in this person's life without his/her feelings of pleasure. He/she would just be fooling him/herself through thoughts and such alone. Again, it is all nothing more than just thoughts of good value and worth in this person's life and not the actual sense of good value and worth in this person's life. But those thoughts and such never had any good value or worth to begin with without our feelings of pleasure. Only our feelings of pleasure would define those thoughts and our lives as having good value and worth to us.
One last thing I would like to say here is that people who take heroin and other drugs and get a pleasure high off of it, thoughts of good value are not what is causing them to get a pleasure high. Instead, it is the heroin itself that gives them the pleasure highs. Going back to what I said before in that good and bad value messages and our feelings are two sides of the same coin and cannot exist without the other, you might be asking me here how can it be that a heroin/drug addict can get a pleasure high then if he/she is not having any good value messages (thoughts). The answer to that would be that the pleasure high itself defines the good value and worth of this drug/heroin addict's life. This pleasure high gives a good value message (perception) to this drug/heroin addict's life. The heroin/drug addict might then use the logical thinking part of his/her brain and say to him/herself while getting the pleasure high: "No, this is not good at all. I could damage myself in the long term," but that does not define any bad value in his/her life during his/her moment of pleasure high. Our logical part of our brains that makes such decisions is nothing more than an evolved survival mechanism to help us avoid certain situations and to solve problems. It does not dictate the good and bad value of our lives. Therefore, our lives cannot be good or bad through just our thinking alone and through everything else in life without our feelings of pleasure or suffering.
Here again, other things in life can have the good and bad value without our feelings of pleasure or suffering. But it would only be those things that have the good and bad value. They cannot have any good or bad value to us without our feelings of pleasure or suffering since our own personal good and bad value is defined through our feelings of pleasure and suffering. The version of good and bad in which our lives are either good and worth living to us or bad and not worth living to us, this version of good and bad value can only be defined through our feelings of pleasure and suffering. If someone else is able to experience pleasure while you are not, then that other person has the good value and worth in his/her life. However, that person cannot be of any good value or worth to you without your feelings of pleasure. Same thing if the other person felt suffering. They would have the bad value, but they would still be of good value to you if you can derive pleasure from them. I will bring up my example with the plant again. It is good to keep a plant healthy and alive. But that version of good is just for the plant and not for us since only our feelings of pleasure define the good value and worth in our lives. Even our own selves and our own personalities can't be anything of good value or worth to us without our feelings of pleasure to derive from that.
The only thing that makes a person great is their level of pleasure and nothing else. Your level of pleasure dictates the level of good value and worth you have for yourself in life. If you have more pleasure than someone else, then that makes you a better person than him/her. Therefore, people who never struggle with depression or anhedonia are the better people than those who do have much suffering and much absence of pleasure in their lives. Moments where you have the greater amount of pleasure are the moments where you are the better person. Moments where you have less pleasure or an absence of pleasure are the moments where you are the person of less good value or no good value.
