The Making of Meaning
There are numerous examples of individuals who were brilliant at their craft, but who were surly and deeply unpleasant people in any other situation as well as being generally incompetent in the most basic tasks of daily life. There are many such cases that demonstrate that finding flow in one activity does not necessarily mean the same person can translate that to the rest of their lives.
This is not advisable, as the time in which we can dedicated ourselves to the pursuits about which we are the most passionate tends to be limited, and there is still the rest of the day to cope with. People who are happiest are not those who have achievements in one area, and in fact many happy people do not achieve anything significant in their lives at all - but they are successful in finding flow across a broad scope of activities. They can enjoy anything they do, even if they are not particularly accomplished at doing it.
In effect, the path to happiness in life is not in finding it in a few isolated moments or hours but in finding happiness in all of life. The difficulty in doing so is that we see little point in placing much effort on activities we believe to be "meaningless" and reserve our mental energy for only a few things we feel are important.
This, too, represents a misconception: there are in fact very few things that are so unimportant as to be done in a haphazard manner. It's not that anything that must be done is worth doing well - as it is difficult to find meaning in something we are doing simply to appease someone else. But anything we choose to do is worth doing well because it's important. If it were not important, why then would we have chosen to do it?
Any activity that meets the requirements of a flow activity - an objective to be accomplished, skills to be applied and improved upon, and feedback that indicates progress - can become a flow activity if only the person performing it chooses to regard it as being meaningful.
People who are in despair often remark that they do not see any meaning in life - and they are exactly right. But what they are most often wrong about is in expecting something meaningful to manifest itself before them rather than taking the responsibility to perceive what is already before them to be meaningful.
What Meaning Means
Definitions of "meaning" are often circular - particularly in a sense as broad as one's existence. CS suggests three ways in which it can be fathomed:
- Purpose in the accomplishment of a worthy goal.
- Having a positive intent, regardless of the outcome
- An orderly and predictable relationship to a concept
In all, a meaningful life is one that is integrated into a unified flow experience. People who find their lives meaningful usually have a goal that is challenging enough to consume most of their energies, such that they recognize a purpose to their decisions and actions. This may be a number of goals rather than a single one, even if those goals are not specific.
Some may invest all their energies into helping others or building a better society, or to living in accordance with their religious or spiritual beliefs. Others devote their lives to the relentless pursuit of something such as money or power, which enables them to prioritize their options and choose a course of action.
To have meaning has nothing to do with ethics: it is just as possible to pursue harmful and objectives that have negative consequences (generally for others) as it is to pursue positive and beneficial ones. While we may revile a scoundrel, we can at the same time recognize the level of dedication he places in achieving his aims - though we may wish he had devoted his energies to positive ends.
Another important component of a meaningful life is intentionality. So many people live reactionary lives, responding in a random manner to the events that are inflicted on them - bystanders and victims of circumstance. To have a life of meaning entails choosing a course to pursue and making progress in its pursuit.
And finally, there are lives of "meaning" that do not result in great accomplishments, but merely in achieving a desired state. A person may wish to live in peace and harmony and dedicate themselves to being proactive (rather than reactive) in achieving that state. Others wish to be accomplished, or at least competent, in their profession and devote themselves to developing their abilities, though they have no specific outcome they wish to achieve.
Taken together, the three paths to a "meaningful" life are purpose, intent, and identity. People who have these qualities are the envy of those who lack them.
Cultivating Purpose
In the lives of most people it is possible to find an underlying purpose that justifies the decisions they make on an everyday basis. It is generally not astounding nor even particularly well understood, but is sufficient to keep them contented with their mundane routines, but not particularly engaged or happy.
Through the history of philosophy, many attempts have been made to discover the ultimate goal that will give a sense of purpose to our existence. These have largely been either based on achieving some ideal situation in the present world or preparing oneself for acceptance into the next life. None of the arguments presented have been compelling enough to gain universal acceptance, and there is always some level of dissatisfaction with the suggestions they provide, but it tends to be more or less adequate to quell the nagging feelings that prowl our minds in idle moments.
Where an idea of the purpose of life becomes common to a large number of people, this becomes a culture, or at least a cultural influence. CS refers to another author's categorization of cultures as being sensate, ideational, and idealistic.
- The sensate cultures are integrated around views of reality that are apparent to the human senses. These tend to be concerned with concrete needs and physical pleasures. They offer practice, rational, and demonstrable reasons for their principles, and generally guide adherents to make life easier, more comfortable, and more pleasant.
- Ideational cultures meanwhile concern themselves with the immaterial and are often contemptuous of the tangible and perceptible reality in preference for philosophical or religious goals. Their principles are not based on reason or anything that can be demonstrated, and generally demand adherents to believe in the absence of all evidence.
- The idealistic culture builds a bridge between the two, remaining grounded in the details of concrete reality but pursuing immaterial ideals that are abstractions upon them - in essence, they promote making progress toward a concrete objective that can never be perfectly achieved. Their principles may be based on reason but their objectives are entirely immaterial. We can imagine perfection based on what we are able to perceive, but can find no example of perfection in the real world.
The author notes that this simple categorization is "debatable" but it does serve to illustrate some of the principles by which people define their personal goals. Certain actions are undertaken for practical purposes, others for immaterial ones, and others for idealistic ones.
Psychologists generally agree upon the process by which people develop the concept of their identity and their desired achievement in life: each person begins with a concept of the self as body, mind, and soul. They determine what is necessary to preserve a desired state and achieve a more desirable one. And then, they choose goals to pursue to effect the desirable state, and actions that will achieve those goals.
It is of little importance whether their desired state is something they have chosen for themselves or an ideal that someone else has depicted for their consideration. Even those who are conformists rather than free-thinking must choose something to which they will conform; and even those who are free-thinking must settle on a concrete goal.
It is in this manner that the purpose of a life is chosen and pursued by each person. It is inevitable that , at some time, we must invest energy in undertaking this process to give us the initiative to undertake any action above those of basic survival.
It's obliquely suggested that a person who feels "lost" has not undertaken this process, and exists in a temporary state of anxiety about what he ought to do. This may occur to us periodically, but our actions in between these moments of indecision is guided by an implicit or explicit choice of the goals we seek to pursue.
Forging Resolve
Defining a goal or objective requires effort, but that effort is wasted if one does not also have the resolve to pursue it through the difficulty and adversity that may arise. It is precisely the effort that will be required that makes a goal worth achieving: accomplishing something that requires little time or effort provides equally little satisfaction.
Too much optimism is as detrimental as not enough: the individual who believes something can be achieved easily will be apt to quit his pursuit when he encounters more difficulty than expected. Another who expects great difficulty may feel the goal is not worth the effort to achieve it.
It's also worth considering that the breadth of goals in the modern world often becomes problematic because time and energy are still limited. To believe that one can be a successful businessman, a good father, an artist, an athlete, and a dozen other things all at once results in having the capacity to do none of them particularly well, and a sense of defeat for having accomplished nothing in spite of a great deal of effort.
The ability to abandon one goal and start on another at any time also diminishes our resolve to achieve anything specific. In past generations a man would become a blacksmith or a hunter because there was nothing else for him to do. In the present day, there are many opportunities and few limitations.
As such we tend to be uncertain: it is difficult to choose something to pursue, and even when the choice is made it is difficult to remain convinced that of the rightness of the decision. There seems to always be something better - though it generally seems so because we have not fully contemplated it.
That is not to say that limitations are necessarily a good thing - as they lock many people into doing things because they feel there is no other choice, which does not lead to a sense of empowerment but one of resentment. While it would certainly simplify matters to be told what to do, it would not lead to satisfaction.
There is also the notion, which is quite correct, that a person who is involuntarily involved in something eventually will find engagement and interest in the activity. This is certainly true of individuals who find satisfaction in mundane and repetitive work - but such people are rare. Our instinctual reaction when forced into something that is awkward and uncomfortable is not to "learn to like it" but to seek to escape it.
Furthermore, becoming skilled at doing something doesn't mean that a person enjoys what they are doing. There are many competent workers and excellent students who are thoroughly miserable through much of their lives, feeling trapped into something they do not particularly enjoy but continue to do for the reward it provides.
The problem, essentially, is that people do not invest much effort in the identification of what they want. They do what is necessary or practical, focusing on success at external tasks without pausing to consider (and sometimes actively avoiding) the question of whether doing it gives them any satisfaction.
It is relatively easy to bring order and focus to the mind for short stretches of time. Reacting in an emergency, playing a game, or engaging in a pleasant conversation are all activities that can hold our attention, but provide no sense of accomplishment or long-term satisfaction. A moment's diversion does not give a person that their life is meaningful.
Recovering Harmony
Harmony is the a sense of satisfaction that things are in order - that we are doing exactly what we ought to be doing, and our present actions are correlated to our values and goals. The problem is that things are not always thus: we often have the sense that what we are doing or experiencing is not progressing along the wrong track, or at all.
Certain eastern philosophies maintain that harmony can be achieved by the lack of desire. In essence, if there is nothing that you want, then it does not matter what you are doing in any given moment. You cannot fail to achieve your goals and ambitions if you have neither goals nor ambitions.
This certainly seems to evidence itself in the lives of animals, who seldom seem discontent. Animals are very much "in the moment" and act only when they are prodded by biological urges - to eat, to sleep, to mate, to avoid danger, and the like. Once the urge is satisfied, the animal returns to a passive state and seems satisfied to remain thus until it is taken by another biological urge.
Ironically, we see that animals suffer when they are not in their ideal state: all creatures behave somewhat erratically when they are hungry and there is nothing to eat, and social creatures seem quite pathetic when separated from their groups. And so it is not that animals have no goals, merely that their goals are rather simple and easily met.
Consider the myth of the "happy savage" which suggests that it is only in the civilized world that man suffers discontents. This simply is not the case, as even in a savage state man can become easily discontented by the same reasons animals do: he is cold, he is hungry, he is lonely, he feels threatened, etc. The primitive man is just as concerned about these states as his civilized counterpart, and has a great deal more difficulty in overcoming them.
The primitive man who feels hunger must invest time in hunting, fishing, and foraging to overcome his unhappy state. The civilized man walks to the pantry and has a snack with very little difficulty (and perhaps, given the state of obesity in the developed world, with not quite enough difficulty for his own good).
Unlike the animal or the savage, civilized man does not survive hand-to-mouth. They do not roam the plains freely hoping that they will stumble across food when they are hungry or find each evening a suitable location to bed down. Humans seek security: to have a permanent shelter and a store of food that extends beyond the next meal. It is in our nature not to be at ease because there is no present emergency, but to be at ease when we have achieved a state that fends off want for a satisfactory amount of time. And this is the point at which men diverge from animals.
Because there is no objective standard of "adequate" security (save, perhaps, having enough of everything to last for the entirety of our foreseeable lifespan), there can be no objective standard for the condition in which man should be contented to be doing nothing.
The ease of satisfying our basic physical needs has one significant drawback: it leaves civilized man with a great deal of free time and nothing specific to do with it. And this is the function of want: it directs man to expend energy achieving more than mere survival. But he is not equipped by nature with a goal to achieve and must discover and define one for himself. In all, that is a good problem to have, but still remains a problem.
(EN: I'm reminded of an economic discussion: that the progress of mankind depends on the proportion of time he spends producing food. Societies that spend 80% to 90% of their time on food production make little progress, and the most advanced societies spend less than 5% of their time on food production - which frees the resources to pursue other goals: clothing, shelter, roads, electronics, the arts, etc. These are the aggregated solutions to the problem of having too much spare time.)
The Unification of Meaning in Life Themes
For most of man's history, he lived in the mode of an animal and his survival was the meaning of his life. And then for a time, living in oppression of autocratic rulers, the meaning of his life was his usefulness to someone else. It is only a recent development that man has the liberty to choose the meaning of his own life, and it is a task at which we have very little guidance in performing.
Psychologists have use the term "life theme" in lieu of the "meaning of life" as it is not a matter of having a well-defined plan, but in making choices of short-term goals that align to a central theme. It is generally believed that we make even minor choices in a manner that is consistent with a core set of ideas that define our life theme - but we are not necessarily aware of that theme, nor is it necessarily a positive one.
The theme of a person's life may be the achievement of something - such as the physician who works to treat patients and develops a specialty - his life choices add up to a theme of curing a given medical condition. The theme of a person's life may also be the avoidance of something - such as the woman who was abused as a child and whose life theme becomes isolating herself to maintain safety from other people.
He mentions the existentialist notion of "authentic" and "inauthentic" action. Authentic action is that of a person who means to achieve a state of his own choosing, whereas inauthentic action is geared toward satisfying the expectations of others. Both can serve as goals and themes - but, naturally, authentic action is more integral and achieves greater satisfaction in life.
It is conceded that the desire for achievement and involvement in authentic action do not always produce a healthy and productive individual. People may be quite perverse in their choice of goals or they may be entirely indifferent to the welfare of others in achieving them. Consider the archetype of the "mad scientists" who is strongly engaged in the pursuit of knowledge that has no practical value and which may in fact be harmful to others.
In western culture of the present day, man is meant to be self-directed, but this also means he may spend a great deal of time - and even his entire life- attempting to find direction. The "professional student" who spends the greater part of his life earning degrees in a wide range of subjects but never puts that knowledge to work is an excellent example. So is the "renaissance man" who tinkers in many different pursuits but does not become competent or productive in any of them.
MC tells a protracted story about a man who had an unfortunate experience in his youth that gave him a clear goal in life: his immigrant parents were taken advantage of by a swindler who took advantage of their ignorance, and this gave him the goal of becoming an attorney who helped immigrants to be aware of their rights and who defended them when they were similarly taken advantage of.
This is a very common story: people who accomplish great things in life can often relate a story from their childhood or really adulthood in which they found their purpose in life. (EN: I am skeptical of how many of these stories are true - but it is also likely that this pattern did not become a prototype until it had been genuinely related enough times that others thought to imitate it in telling their own biographies.)
However, not everyone is lucky enough, if such a thing can be considered lucky, to have an even that sets their life on rails. Most people are not born with significant disadvantages or suffer great misfortunes or psychological traumas - and yet must find some course to take on life's journey.
There is no simple answer to the reason some people seem to develop a coherent purpose while others drift through empty and meaningless lives. There is too much variety in human existence to develop a clear formula, but there are patterns, and their common theme is in the period in which an individual is inspired to make order out of chaos.
This may result from a traumatic event, or it may be the simple reason that life is inherently meaningless - but whatever the case an individual recognizes the need to achieve something that will take a lifetime of effort, or which cannot be fully achieved but progress is possible. The initiating incident for this is less significant than the process of contemplating possibilities and discovering a compelling theme.
In essence, life's purpose is like any goal: it involves considering the situation such as it is, imagining how it might be improved, and planning a course of action to effect that improvement. It can be discovered by intellectual contemplation just as easily as it might be thrust upon us by some random event.
There's rather a long passage about the way in which people are inspired by literature. Many of the scientific inventions of the present age were described in science fiction a few decades prior. And many is the man who is inspired to emulate the qualities of some heroic character he discovered in a work of fiction.
Again, this is the discovery of a simple notion: the belief that things are a certain way, but ought to be different. And in that sense, those who feel they lack a purpose in life are often merely guilty of inertia: they see things as they are, accept them as they are, and see no opportunity to make them any different than they are.
There is a brief consideration of conservatism and idealism. Conservatism deals with making things go back to the way they were before - which many religious fundamentalists seem to seek. Idealism deals with causing things to be a way that they are utterly incapable of becoming - which many political fundamentalists seem to seek. Neither of these is of course possible, which explains why the majority of people who hold fundamentalist beliefs are frustrated, angry and bitter.
(EN: Another critical difference between practical goals and fundamentalists visions is that a person with practical goals seeks to change the world by his own effort, whereas fundamentalists expect other people to undertake the effort to make the changes they want.)
The last bit returns again to pondering the complexities of modern life. In today's world we have far more choices than did people in generations past, and while that seems to open up a lot of possibilities, it also makes the choice of one's path in life more difficult to make.