Sep

The Rough Guide to Self-Development Part Seven the meaning of (my) life

He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how – Nietzsche.

When it comes to meaning I feel that I need to nail my colours to the mast. It is a big topic and sometimes a very controversial one. For me it implicates the core of who we are – which is what this blog is about. So I’ll give you a paragraph about what I think before I move on to how meaning can function in your own self-development.

The paragraph about me:
For me meaning is a meeting of me and [something or someone] – that is: meaning is not just made up. For me meaning (or some meanings) have the quality of discovery rather than creation. I feel that some things are true of me and my situation even if I don’t want them to be (for now). The meaning of my life is about meeting – getting to the core of something (whether it is an idea, or a person’s issue, or a heart-to-heart meeting with another).

Meaning Matters
Viktor Frankl in his classic Man’s Search for Meaning shows that a sense of meaning – a reason to live – can be the difference between life and death even in an extreme situation (being imprisoned in a death camp).

There is a little parable that goes something like this. Three men are laying bricks: one is hating it – it is just doing the same thing over and over to build yet another building, another is happy he likes to contribute to making something (a fine building), the third is delighted he is building a cathedral to the glory of the god to whom he feels personally related.

In more mundane matters the meaning makes a difference too. Imagine you have a friend who, when driving along a particular stretch of road, that you often travel with them, pulls out near to the centre of the road. They do this every time and they don’t do it on other roads. Then they explain that they do it on that piece of road because on that stretch of road there are so many side streets that it is safest to be near the centre of the road. Your feelings might change from puzzled and anxious to reassured.

Another mundane example: Imagine that your friend wants you to sort the laundry in a different way to the one you do. It will not make a difference to the result. Your way is perfectly fine. You don’t see why you should bother to do it differently. Then your friend explains that the reason they don’t want you to do it that way was because their abusive parent punished them for doing it that way. This will make a difference to how you feel about sorting the laundry.

Our lives are saturated by meaning and it affects us intimately – it is such a regular part of our lives that we often overlook it.

Two Exercises
To get a sense of how much a part of our lives meaning is, try this.

Think of an important experience from your past. Then describe it – either to yourself, in a journal or somehow, or to someone else. As you do this try to only describe. Try to avoid interpretation completely. I think you will find this is extremely difficult to do. Our meanings are tied up very closely with our experiences.

That exercise may be a bit biased – I asked you to choose a meaningful experience and then to try and remove the meaning from it. So this next exercise is about normal experience.

Take a moment just now to look around you. Notice that your eye is drawn to some things rather than others. Notice any feelings that you have about what you notice (they may be slight but you probably have some). Notice that after a while doing this you get tired of doing it. (You can do this with sounds or sensations as well as sights.) As I look around there are some books and papers on the table that don’t interest me much, then I see a magazine open at an article I was reading which I find more interesting. If I looked up and saw my beloved that would be a very different experience. What I want to point out is that the meaning comes with the experience. Mostly I don’t see something and then decide about what it means – this happens sometimes, with surprising or unfamiliar experiences. With the surprising and unfamiliar experiences there is a pause in the meaning process; which calls our attention to the process itself. These times can be striking and memorable – but they usually make up a small part of our life.

It may be possible to strip the meaning out of experience, though I’m not sure it would be desirable. It would certainly take a lot of work. There have been philosophical attempts to simply describe how something is – without any prejudice by the observer interfering. Unfortunately no two people committed to this idea have described the same thing in the same way.

Finding Meaning
Which you may feel is all very well and entirely beside the point, if you don’t have a sense of meaning. This lack of meaning may range from being something that doesn’t bother you to a gnawing ache that is experienced as black despair.

I do think that there are some things you can do to find a sense of meaning for you. However it may not be grand or impressive. A girl I knew made small glass figurines – for her life was about making beautiful things. Did she want to be another Da Vinci or Brancusi? – no, she was happy making small glass figurines. It may be that you want to be a parent or a friend – this is what (your) life means to you.

Your meaning may not be seen as important by others. This is another whole subject – that some people’s gifts are looked down upon is one symptom of a sick society in my view.

Hints
I think we can get some hints about our meaning from reflecting on our experience. These hints are things like: we feel nourished and better for having done something; we feel like we come alive when we are doing something, we are effortlessly attentive to something.

Another way is imagining a narrative. Imagine that you are an old person looking back on a full life. You are in your rocking chair on the verandah telling your grandchild or great grandchild about your life. What you loved, the hard times, the regrets, the lessons you want to pass on to them.

Steve Pavlina has a four step exercise. 1. Take out a sheet of paper or something to write on. 2. Write at the top “What is my purpose in life?” 3. Write your answers to this question. Keep writing. When you get bored, keep writing. When you feel there is stuff you think is silly, write it down. When there is stuff that is hard to face, write it down. 4. You have found it when you get to the one that makes you cry.

If you feel the lack of meaning as an awful thing then this kind of reflection may not work. In this situation, if you have good support, it may be possible to examine the despair. It may be linked to traumatic experiences or particular ways of thinking and feeling that you have developed. Paying attention to the despair can lead to finding your sense of meaning – however this is best done with solid support. And the support may well include drugs – anti-depressants have saved people’s lives and may be an extremely valuable support while examining difficult experiences that you have gone through. I am entirely in favour of people using drugs to support themselves on their healing journey.

A Possible Down Side
It is possible to exploit people’s willingness to bear with the how in the service of a why. I think at a societal level this happens in a lot of caring professions – the pay is poor, the workers are effectively exploited because their work is meaningful to them. (In Australia parking inspectors are paid more than childcare workers!)

Reminders
To have our lives infused with the meaning of (our) life I think it can be helpful to have reminders for ourselves. Pictures are often used this way – from religious paintings to the snapshots of friends and family on a desk. When I get stressed about a particular activity I like to stop and ask myself, “Do I want to do this?” It helps me assess whether the particular thing fits with what I want to do with my life. Rituals can also be useful – a particular time of day spent in quiet contemplation, giving thanks for meals, making a cup of coffee or breakfast for our partner, all can be rituals that connect us to our meaning.

Meaning can be a calling
The meaning of our lives is usually experienced as inexhaustible. There is abundance about it. And while it doesn’t lead to fretting it can be experienced as a calling to go beyond where we are. To improve our craft or experience more of some part of life. It can be experienced as a calling to be more truly and deeply who we are. It can be the core and the fuel as well as the reward of our self-development.

This has been a very personal post. I hope I have not ‘gotten in the way’ but managed to evoke some part of your experience too. I would like to hear from you about your experiences of meaning – great or small. Do you have a sense of meaning in your life? Please tell me about this in the comments. If you think I am completely mistaken about this or you have a very different perspective you are most welcome to leave comments about that too. Looking forward to hearing from you.

A beaut blog: LymanReed.com is a blog by, yes, Lyman Reed. It is about self development in daily life and has lots of practical articles that are also well written. Highly recommended, you can visit it now by clicking here.

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