To wonder too openly, or intensely, about the meaning of life sounds like a peculiar, ill-fated and unintentionally comedic pastime. It isn’t anything an ordinary mortal should be doing – or would get very far by doing. A select few might be equipped to take on the task and discover the answer in their own lives, but such ambition isn’t for most of us. Meaningful lives are for extraordinary people: great saints, artists, scholars, scientists, doctors, activists, explorers, national leaders…. If ever we did discover the meaning, it would – we suspect – in any case be incomprehensible, perhaps written in Latin or in computer code. It wouldn’t be anything that could orient or illuminate our activities. Without always acknowledging it, we are – in the background – operating with a remarkably ungenerous perspective on the meaning of life.
Yet, in truth, the subject is for everyone; it is for all of us to wonder about, and define, a meaningful existence. There need be nothing forbidding about the issue. A meaningful life can be simple in structure, personal, usable, attractive and familiar. This is a guidebook to it.
A meaningful life is close to, but at points importantly different from, a happy life. Here are some of its ingredients:
– A meaningful life draws upon, and exercises, a range of our higher capacities, for example, those bound up with tenderness, care, connection, self-understanding, sympathy, intelligence and creativity.
– A meaningful life aims not so much at day-to-day contentment as fulfilment. We may be leading a meaningful life and yet, really rather often, be in a bad mood (just as we may be having frequent surface fun while living, for the most part, meaninglessly).
– A meaningful life is bound up with the long-term. Projects, relationships, interests and commitments will build up cumulatively. Meaningful activities leave something behind, even when the emotions that once propelled us into them have passed.
– Meaningful activities aren’t necessarily those we do most often. They are those we most highly value and will, from the perspective of our deaths, regret most deeply.
– The question of what makes life meaningful has to be answered personally (even if our conclusions are marked by no particular idiosyncrasy). Others cannot be relied upon to determine what will be meaningful to us. What we call ‘crises of meaning’ are generally moments when someone else’s – perhaps very well intentioned – interpretation of what might be meaningful to us runs up against a growing realisation of our divergent
