My Corner of the Web
I recently had a good conversation with my brother on a very important and universal question:
How do you discover meaning in your life?
Before we discuss the answer we ended up with, it is important to discuss two common errors people make answering this question. The errors fall into distinct categories based on whether your perspective is humanistic or spiritual. Why? Your perspective will affect your reason for seeking meaning. If you are spiritual, most people believe that you are “called” by God and that your “calling” is the meaning of your life. If you are humanistic, you believe meaning is something you should discover because it enriches your life. Both perspectives bring you to the end-state where meaning is important and something to find. You just get there from different directions and both directions fall prey to different types of errors and misconceptions. I am not going to make a judgement upon which perspective is better, that is up to you, this essay is just to discuss the process of finding meaning and some stumbling blocks to finding it. Humanists often fall prey to the “next big thing” definition of meaning. This is caused by capitalistic influences where all things are measured in terms of magnitude. Unfortunately, it ignores the fact that all humans develop tolerances to experiences and therefore can easily lose sensitivity. This gives rise to immature phrases like “seen one and you’ve seen them all.” In our society, this is meaning from pop culture and unfortunately it is addicted to the magnitude of experience. If your meaning is only derived from magnitude, you will quickly become disenchanted because quantifying experiences by magnitude makes you quickly run out of new experiences. If you can only hike mountains as measured by the height of the mountain, you will surely run out of mountains to climb before you die. This is the concept behind the rush to the next big thing where experiences are valued by either their new magnitude along the same axis, or their magnitude of being different from the common. Unfortunately, that quickly produces frustrated people because such shallow meaning quickly loses its flavor. Thus the rush to the next big thing, is a chase for reflected meaning. True meaning is more complex than that (as we will discuss later) and lasts by mature people cultivating “refined palettes for Life” whereby experiences are not measured by magnitude but by finer distinctions, subtle delights and soft smiles. More on this later. Religious people can fall prey to the “burning bush” expectation for meaning where they expect God to lay out in a clear, unambiguous way a grand meaning that is dramatic and awe-inspiring. They think like this, “give me the burning bush like you gave Moses or you must not have a plan for me.”
So, if you avoid both of the above traps, that only tells you how not to find meaning. We are still left with, so “how do you find meaning?” That depends on your maturity level. As Dr. Covey talks about in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, there are three basic maturity levels: dependence, independence and interdependence. Your meaning is scoped by your maturity level and natural ability. Since your natural ability is out of your control, we will concentrate on maturity level. So, in terms of calling, you are also only called in accordance with your maturity level. In humanistic terms, although you may chase reflected meaning, you cannot create meaning higher than your maturity level. Also, you cannot skip levels. At level 0 (dependence), meaning is derived meaning from the things you are dependent upon. At level 1 (independence), you have the ability to create original meaning. At level 2 (interdependence), you (with others) can create large-scale, ambitious meaning. Now that we understand the different levels of meaning, we can take a moment to understand the word meaning. Meaning is a motive force for activity, a byproduct of activity and an assessment about the results of an activity. To achieve those three things, meaning is a self-reinforcing context that affects and causes activities in your life. Intuitively, meaning denotes a reason to exist. Some things have intrinsic and static meaning, others (like humans) can have dynamic, multiple and layered meanings. It is also very important to realize that meaning can be discovered and created.
So, if you agree that meaning is important to find and that achieving the highest-level of meaning (“interdependent meaning”) is a worthy goal, you must be focused. Maintaining focus to achieve meaning is unnatural because the brain naturally wanders. The brain acts in the same way as an elephant in a bazaar. It is difficult to get an elephant quickly through a bazaar because it has a tendency to be distracted as its trunk sways from side to side. The experienced elephant trainer will instruct the elephant to carry a log with its trunk and then quickly pass through the bizarre. The elephant that is focused on its task quickly makes its way through the bazaar. The more efficiently you move from dependence, to independence, to interdependence will determine the scope and scale of meaning you discover and create.
In closing, people interested in this topic should also read Dr. Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning.
- Mike
Change History:
8/3/2003 - Added the phrase "and your natural ability" to how your meaning is scoped. How your meaning is scoped by your natural ability needs to be expanded upon; however, since this is out of most people's control it is not nearly as important as how your meaning is scoped by maturity level.