September 5, 2006
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The question of meaning and purpose come in our lives when we rise above mere survival. Many of us share life meaning in hopes for freedom and expansion that prosperity promises. Others have already enjoyed the freedom that comes with prosperity and discovered even that is not enough to give meaning to their lives. When we are confronted with it, most of us find meaning and purpose in the forms of doing and of future. We may find meaning in caring for our families, helping others, being successful, winning or making it. But most of what we find in our search for life’s purpose in doing is only temporary. We may notice that these alone seem to be relatively unstable, impermanence, and sooner or later, they will lead to suffering.
For example, if caring for our families gives meaning to our lives, what happens to that meaning when our spouse decided to divorce us? What happens to that meaning when our children don’t need us and perhaps don’t even listen to us any more? If helping others gives meaning to our lives, then we depend on others being worst off than we are so that our lives can continue to be meaningful and we can feel good about ourselves? If the desire to excel, win, and succeed at some activities provide us with meaning, what if we achieved these goals? Does this mean that our meaning of life is coming to an end? What if we never win or our winning comes to an end one day (and it will), do we look back at our memories for meager meaning in our lives? Making it in whatever field is only meaningful as long as there are millions of others don’t make it, so we need other human being to fail so our lives can have meaning?
Comments (5)
My purpose is to search for Fiona, but I don’t want to find her because then I have no purpose left …
many of my friends who just graduated and now working are looking for ‘the meaning of life’ …& are looking for something to accomplish…..strange! thanks for the post!!
Hmm. why does life have to have only one meaning? Why does it have to involve having some external influence? Can’t meaning come from within? Acceptance of the self in the now. Enjoyment of the moment.We can do all the things you mentioned because we want to do them. They often contribute to how we feel about ourselves. (e.g. I like myself more when being nice to people instead of mean.) But meaning, I think, can be something else.
That all sounds very philosophical, when the bottom line is people probably all define their life’s meaning differently. Steve Irwin, who just died, often said the mission of his life was to educate people about animals and ecology. I admire his passion about that. So does mission give you meaning? Not from what you said above. If I accept what you said above, it is different than mission. I have always considered my purpose to be becoming as loving, compassionate and caring as I can naturally become without getting artificial and hokey about it. I’ll have to give this one some thought.
The term “Multiple Realities” just popped into my head. There could be as many levels of meaning as there are levels of reality. A physical meaning, a spiritual meaning, a career meaning, a family meaning, etc.
I would like to have more prosperity so I could give to all those causes I would love to support. I would like to have a lot of things but the thing I have found gives me meaning is living in the day. Judi