The good life which we all seek is a meaningful life not necessarily a happy life. Chasing happiness is aiming for the wrong (or at least a suboptimal) goal. Finding meaning is much better for health and deeper happiness than merely pursuing happiness as pleasure. Meaning has four pillars that make meaning powerful and desirable in our lives: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. Last time we looked at the difference between happiness and meaning and started on the first pillar.
The Second Pillar of Meaning: Purpose
The author starts off her discussion on purpose by pointing out the unglamorous job of zoo keeping which nonetheless is one of the most meaningful jobs as described by its practitioners. What makes a job or a person have purpose? Two things: 1) “a ‘stable and far-reaching’ goal….toward which we are always working [that] serves as the organizing principle of our lives.” 2) A goal that contributes to making the world a better place and is never quite completable. One’s work should never be done. A goal that is perfectly achievable, (for example a minor goals, even if it is all consuming, like revenge, losing 5 pounds, getting a Ferrari, marrying a significant other, or any other stepping stone goal) does not count because it probably won’t make the world better and it can be completed. A completed goal is the death of the goal and the possible limited meaning that might have come with it – which possibly results in despair. This does not mean that we shouldn’t have small or short term goals; only that if that is all you have then you are less likely to have a meaningful purpose.
Living purposely, that is choosing one’s meaningfully purpose goals, “requires self-reflection and self-knowledge.” Self-reflection on one’s, identity, interest, ambitions, and life events that shaped one’s character as well as self-knowledge on what one’s values, beliefs, strengths, and weaknesses are, is necessary for identifying meaningfully purposeful goals. Work that uses our strengths and is in keeping with our values is the most meaningful work – but the reality is that such a job is hard to find in our world. The author laments two problem 1) that disgruntled workers can be found at all levels of an organization and 2) that “The four most common occupations in America are retail salesperson, cashier, food preparer and server, and office clerk, low-paying and often rote jobs that don’t scream ‘meaningful work’—at least not on their face.” The problem of finding meaningful work is in the mindset: “those who consistently rank their jobs as meaningful have something in common: they see their jobs as a way to help others….The ability to find purpose in the day-to-day tasks of living and working goes a long way towards building meaning….when we reframe our tasks as opportunities to help others, our lives and our work feel more significant.”
The Third Pillar of Meaning: Storytelling
Trying to make sense of the world is very likely a major factor in our human proclivity to tell stories. “We have a primal desire to impose order on disorder—to find the signal in the noise….Stories are particularly essential when it comes to defining our identity—understanding who we are and how we got that way.” Story telling creates the sensible world; that is it makes sense of the random events by emphasizing some and ignoring others. In this picking, choosing, and interpreting of events we add meaning to any chain of events and turn them into a narrative.
“The most moving stories…are rooted in vulnerability, but they are not too emotionally raw. The stories should come…’from scars and not wounds.’ They should have settled in the storyteller’s mind so that he or she can reflect back on the experience and pull out its meaning.” In other words a good story only comes out after there has been time for reflection: it must be connected to one’s purpose, one’s past, and evolving identity for maximized meaning. The technical term for these stories is “narrative identity” defined as: “an internalized story you create about yourself—a personal myth… ‘about who we are deep down—where we come from, how we got this way, and what it all means.’” People with the most meaning in life (that is who have the most of the 4 pillars) tend have more and tell more redemptive stories. “In these stories, the tellers move from suffering to salvation—they experience a negative event followed by a positive event that resulted from the negative event and therefore gives their suffering some meaning.” Please note that the story does not usually make the suffering worthwhile but it does provide some comfort through the meaning generated. The opposite of a redemptive story is a contamination story in which events go from good to bad. Other life stories “are defined by inner transformation and personal growth, while others by stagnation or regression; some by communion, love, and belonging and others by loneliness and isolation; some by agency…others by helplessness;…beyond redemption, people who believe their lives are meaningful tend to tell stories defined by growth, communion, and agency.”
One more technique to help identify and give meaning to life events is: counterfactual thought. Often if one imagines that, a previously deemed neutral event in life, did not happen or happened differently one is often suddenly overwhelmed with meaning and new stories to tell.
The Fourth Pillar of Meaning: Transcendence
Transcendence, defined as going beyond the normal or physical, is an experience in which “we feel that we have risen above the everyday world to experience a higher reality.” Four qualities of a transcendent experience are that they are 1) passive (while we can facilitate or induce the likelihood, the actual mystical experience always comes down as if by external force) 2) transient (the experience is quite fleeting even if the “high” lasts for hours) 3) ineffable (meaning very hard to describe in language) and 4) noetic (one receives knowledge, wisdom, or some new insight). “During transcendent states, two remarkable things happen….first our sense of self washes away along with all of its petty concerns and desires. We then feel deeply connected to other people and everything else that exists in the world….This is the paradox of transcendence. It simultaneously makes individuals feel insignificant and yet connected to something massive and meaningful.” There are several dangerous place where transcendence is experienced such as from orbit or in a lightning storm but the most common and open to all is in nature.
In our world, the cultural forces of happiness and the fast paced life work against developing the four pillars of meaning in our lives. Fortunately, there appears to be hope in societies and clubs were a culture of meaning is developing. However, the author believes that these pillars of meaning can be applied at any time in life and if one has not done so in the past one can start anytime.