Flourishing Life Society
  • Home
  • Flourishing in Life
    • Addiction Recovery
    • Coronavirus 2020
    • Personal Development
  • Psychology of Wellness
    • Emotion >
      • Emotional Fitness
    • Psychology Archive
  • Flourishing Relationships
  • Health and Fitness
  • About Us
Home  | Flourishing in Life  | Meaning and Purpose  | The Meaning of Life

The Meaning of Life

BY: T. Franklin Murphy | January 2018
Purpose effort
Adobe Stock Images
​We squander hope spending excessive time seeking the meaning of life; but we could, instead, use our precious time creating a life of meaning.
Here it is, presented in a beautifully wrapped package, succinctly written in easy to follow words—the meaning of life. Do I have your attention? Humans have searched for the meaning of life ever since they stumbled on consciousness. When we are not planning for our next meal, shelter or sexual partner, we ruminate about what’s it all about, anyway. The ingenious human mind has constructed complex, simple and cockamamie theories over the millennia. Shared beliefs often bind peoples together, motivating them to good and evil.
#meaning #purpose #passion #flourishinglife 
The drive to know the purpose of life is like a cruel joke. We want to know something beyond our capacity to know, frustratingly we grasp at straws to create a castle. Perhaps the answer is not in the imaginary castle but in the blades of straw we hold in our hands. As we narrow our vision, zeroing in on aspects of living, we find purpose and purpose enriches our experience and gives fullness to life.

Carl Jung mused, “The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” We may search the giant libraries of the grandest universities, devouring philosophy from the great minds of humanity and never stumble upon the enriching gifts of meaning.
 
“Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet…” William Shakespeare
 
The words, no matter how bright and intelligent, fail where the heart presides. Science struggles to integrate the world of neurons into the rich mental life of feelings, sensations, and meanings. Sitting on top of Maslow’s pyramid rest self-actualization—a meaningful life. But those that achieve peace don’t subscribe to a universal doctrine of meaning. They haven’t read from a golden book, discovered in a distant cave, revealing carefully guarded secrets of meaning. Their self-actualization and peace stem from living a meaningful life—Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr.
"Our purposeful ruminations forge meaning rather than find meaning."
Our suffering, achievements and motivations all are subject to meaning. The meanings give life to our existence. Through meaning the emptiness is filled and the shadows disperse with light. But meaning is subjective and often dictated by painful pasts. The sorrows can absorb goodness out of life, leaving meanings parched and cynical, shattering fundamental assumptions (people are good, the world is just, the environment is safe and predictable). Life becomes senseless and devoid of self-actualizing purpose. When meaningless prevails, we are held hostage by evils in our lives, slipping into the depths of depression. Especially in hardship, we need purposeful meaning to lighten our load and re-infuse our life with hope. We need to suffer well.

Michael Eigen suggests that experience shifts meanings in different contexts “Spirit, mind, I, Self, consciousness, unconscious, psyche, breath, energy, meaning, personality, body aliveness, variable fields of being—.” How we experience the happening of living depends deeply on the machinery of the mind. What goes in is subject to the twisting and turning of complexity before being spit out into a coherent story of purpose. When life is too chaotic, the processing of experience can go awry. The pain, the sorrow and the shocks make no sense; life has no meaning and we collapse. “When one’s scream becomes meaningless,” we no longer scream when wronged. (Toxic Nourishment; Michael Eigen; 1999.)
When life experience overwhelms, collapsing previous expectations of life, invalidating how we once made sense of the world, the mind churns over the experience seeking to assign a place of meaning. Some events have no logical meaning. The cruelty of the world collides with our serene existence creating unpredictable chaos that we can’t explain. Our ruminations attempt to find meaning that doesn’t exist. In these instances, we must intervene with a self-disciplined rumination. Emily Esfahani Smith refers to this process as “deliberate rumination.”
 
Our purposeful ruminations forge meaning rather than find meaning. The purpose for a singular event may lie hidden in complexity; we can only accept the pain by accepting that life, at times, is undefinable. We must redirect our mind to key areas that establish foundations of meaning. We need purposeful goals and supporting relationships.
 
In The Developing Mind, Daniel Siegal declares, “The way the mind establishes meaning is closely linked to social interactions and both meaning making and relationships appear to be mediated via the same neural circuits responsible for initiating emotional processes.”
Loneliness and lack of meaning often travel together. We need our pain to be meaningful—to actually have a purpose, creating a connection to others and life. We don’t need relief for discomforts but a purpose for the discomforts.
 
In the words of Frankl, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” (Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl.)
 
I don’t know the meaning of life; I do know my life has meaning. My goals of deepening spirituality, research and grappling with unanswerable existential questions of existence (coming to know certain truths about the world and accepting the unknowables) has given meaning and purpose. My connections to adult children in their various stages of struggle and success gives me meaning and purpose. My ruminations can’t save a child from struggling or force different action, but I can love and compassionately accept. My loving wife and her supporting connection gives life meaning and purpose. These are the things that renew my appreciation for life. My mind delights in human kindness, the beauties of nature, and the fascinating feelings of the body. “…nothing invests life with more meaning than the realization that every moment of sentience is a precious gift.” (Steven Pinker; the Blank Slate)
 
Life in all its splendid wonders holds more meaning than a life time of exploration will ever discover. We connect with life in openness to allow meaning to continually flow through souls, brighten our minds and create lasting connections with the world and its inhabitants. This is the meaning of life.
Please support FLS with a share:
Twitter Reddit LinkedIn Email

    Flourishing Life Society Wellness Update

Subscribe to Newsletter
*I respect your privacy, email addresses used for newsletter distribution only

Books Referenced in this Article:
FLS Link. Experiencing Awe: Experiences of awe promote pro-social behavior and invite psychological development. The wise find awe in the awesomeness of life.
Picture
Many things in life remain unanswered. We must live within this uncertainty.
We are of infinite worth and complete insignificance.
When we expertly greet our child's emotions with empathy, acceptance and reciprocation, the child develops a positive relationship with their own feelings--a major contribution to healthy living.
Life has many emotions. All pleasure is limiting, flowing and then gone. Too much pleasure and it loses its appeal.
Finding ourselves and our place in the universe.
we learn in the realms of uncertainty.

External Links:
External Link: The Hard Truth Of Poker -- And Life: You’re Never ‘Due’ For Good Cards
External Link: A 4-Step Breathing Exercise to Cope With Difficult Emotions
External Link: The Benefits of Playing Music Help Your Brain More Than Any Other Activity
External Link: Coping: Dealing with Life’s Inevitable Disappointments in a Healthy Way
We live blind and deaf to the primary motivating force of action. Feelings unnoticed nudge us to act. We gain a deeper appreciation for life and measured control when we develop our relationship with emotion through focusing.
FLS Link. Self-forgiveness: Genuine self-forgiveness is a process of accepting responsibility, working through the emotions, repairing damage, and recommitting to values.
FLS link. Passionate Purpose. We need passionate purpose to energize our flat lives, giving fire to existence and joy to routines.
External Links:
External Link: A Practical Approach  to Balance Ambition with Contentment
External Link: You Should Treat Life as a Work of Art
In the ordinary moments, we can find tremendous meaning.
POPULAR AND RECENT
Topics: Meaning of Life, Purpose, Wellness


Subscribe to Newsletter
Home
  • Relationships​
  • Personal Growth​
  • Wellness
  • Emotions
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Flourishing in Life
    • Addiction Recovery
    • Coronavirus 2020
    • Personal Development
  • Psychology of Wellness
    • Emotion >
      • Emotional Fitness
    • Psychology Archive
  • Flourishing Relationships
  • Health and Fitness
  • About Us