Lately, I’ve been going through a bit of a “meaning epidemic”, if you will. I’ve struggled to find meaning in the daily, monotonous tasks I find myself doing. I found that even the things I used to find joy in were now boring and sluggish. I needed a new perspective.
The book Man’s Search for Meaning explains Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning. In the book, Frankl describes life in Nazi prison camps. A Nazi prison camp would break most people. And yet, Frankl was able to stay vigilant and maintain good spirits.
Frankl argues the reason for his survival wasn’t what most people would assume. Some philosophers like Sigmund Freud reason that human drive comes from pleasure. Others say it comes from power. Frankl offered a different perspective. He said that human drive comes from meaning.
Thus, a question emerges: how do we find meaning in a life that wasn’t designed to feel meaningful?
Meaning relies on 3 “pillars”. The first is creation. When you contribute a part to something that only you could do, you feel a sense of meaning. You feel meaning because you brought something into the world. This thing, whatever it is, wouldn’t have existed otherwise. This is why a mother might feel incredible meaning right after having a child. It’s why creatives are some of the happiest and most fulfilled people you will find. It’s why philosophers suggest creating in the morning.
When we create, we are able to take our thoughts and ideas and bring them to reality. We can express what we’re feeling. This is why journaling works so well. It takes your emotions and puts them on paper. You can then look at them from an outsider’s perspective and see things for what they are.
One of the best ways to feel meaning is through experience. This includes both experiencing things for yourself and helping someone else experience something. By bettering someone’s quality of life, you’re being useful. You’re adding value, and as a result you feel meaning.
This isn’t limited to “experiences” though. When we help other people, we improve their quality of life and thus their experience. If you have a pet, you improve its quality of life by giving it a better experience than most other animals. You can draw meaning from that.
Suffering is considered a nuisance. What many don’t realize is that without black, we couldn’t have white. The contrast of suffering with joy is what creates the joy in the first place. Opposites are required for both to exist.
Think about how many great works of art were created in the depths of suffering. They exist because people were able to channel their pain into something. Something greater than their own lives.
We can derive meaning from suffering in two ways:
If we are using our suffering to make the world a better place
If we are able to see the contrast and requirement of suffering to have joy
It’s similar to experience, because we are able to see that our pain made an impact and helped other people. Now, this only stands true if the suffering is for the greater good, not because you messed up in some way.
A mother giving birth is one of, if not the best example of meaning in all dimensions. The mother goes through incredible suffering before she gives birth. She creates one of the most complex things humans can make by themselves. She has the ability to make another human’s life better. Through the release of hormones at birth, she also makes her own life better.
A key point here is that meaning doesn’t last forever. It needs to be replenished. A mother’s meaning from a child’s birth might last from a few months to a year. But it fades. To maximize our meaning on a day-to-day basis, we need to do things that create meaning daily.
Humans create meaning for themselves when they make the world a better place. Here’s the thing. We can’t all quit our jobs and go help people 24/7. There are things we need to do to keep the world running.
Through taking what we have access to and transforming it into benefit for other people, we are able to create meaning. Here’s the point people miss: meaning is like joy. You’re never going to feel meaning if you don’t try to feel meaning. In the same way, you’re never going to be grateful for the things you have if you never try to feel grateful. You need to say to yourself, “I’m going to be happy today.” In a lot of ways, joy is a choice. The same thing is true for meaning.
In the end, meaning only has 3 requirements.
If you have all those, you’ll be able to feel like your life is meaningful. But only if you search out the meaning and make an effort to feel it.