In my last blog on the topic of meaning and happiness, I defined the concept of “meaning” in its simplest form as “what is important to us.” Sometimes people defining meaning and purpose as the same thing. They can be the same thing, but are not necessarily. It depends on how you look at things. The way some people define purpose can be limiting, and I do not want to define meaning as a limiting thing, so I want to make a distinction between meaning and that idea of purpose.
When people refer to the “purpose” for their life, they might be talking about finding some or pre-ordained or pre-existing reason they are alive, or the notion that they are alive for some purpose and they need to find out what that purpose is; they might be saying “there must be some reason I am on this planet….” This is not what I am talking about when I talk about meaning. I make no assumptions either way about some kind of pre-ordained purpose. It’s possible that there is some purpose for my life or someone else’s life, which was decided before each of us was even born. I can’t pretend to know about these kinds of things. But that’s not the point of my focus on meaning. If purpose is decided for us, meaning is something completely different. We decide meaning. We find and create meaning in our lives. We decide why things matter to us, and we search for those things we want to matter to us. We even change our minds about meaning. Something that might have meant alot to me when I was still a lawyer (winning) doesn’t matter so much to me now that I am no longer involved in fighting for other people in litigation. I didn’t want the idea of “winning” to matter to me so much anymore. Instead, I wanted to be able to help people more. So, I quit practicing law and went back to school to become a therapist. When we live by a search for meaning, we make individual and collective decisions about our values, what is important to us, and then we try to live by those values. In doing so, we find the rewards of having true personalized meaning in our lives– things worth pursuing and doing, if not in the moment, then at least over time. When we search for meaning in our lives, our lives begin to change, and so do we.
When people search for “their purpose in life,” they can end up deciding that some other person or group, a church, a parent, a trusted mentor, can help them determine why they are alive. I am suggesting that instead we need to turn inward, not to someone else. Others can help us find meaning within us, but need not limit the search by a confining definition of purpose. Meaning is something we are free to decide, not something that is already decided for us. We have free will. We decide what matters, and we re-make that decision as often as we like. If we are honest with ourselves about it, we will also address the things we need to change to follow a course that has meaning for us, so we can get closer to our own ideals about how we should live our lives in the most meaningful way we can.
The way people sometimes define “purpose” can be very limiting—some one or some thing other than ourselves limits what makes our lives meaningful. This is why I prefer a pursuit of “meaning,” rather than “purpose.” With meaning, we are free to decide for ourselves why our lives are worth living, without having to adhere to or find some mysterious notion about why our lives have a point. If you believe you were created you for a reason, that you are alive because there is a purpose, a plan, and your life is a part of it, I do not want to contradict you. That might be true, and I respect your beliefs. What I am saying doesn’t contradict this idea, it just adds to it.
I am suggesting that if you find meaning in your life, if you decide what is important to you, along the way, you will almost certainly also find whatever purpose may have been set for you, but you won’t be limited by someone else’s ideas about what that purpose might be. If you search for meaning, instead of purpose, and you look inward for meaning, you will find your own purpose that is consistent with who you really are, rather than finding purpose based on what someone else thinks you should be. This is personal freedom. This is genuine personal exploration. This is the search for meaning. Meaning might even be said to be the purpose you create for yourself, for your life.
Much of the work I do with clients in therapy has to do with helping them break free of the idea that they have to look outside themselves to find purpose in their lives. By re-focusing their attention to creating meaning from within themselves, rather than looking for purpose outside of themselves, they begin to find balance, increased self-worth, the ability to accept themselves as they are rather than what someone else thought they “should” be, they are able to make more concrete goals, and find greater satisfaction in their lives. This is not always an easy task, and is often quite difficult, and yet from everything I have seen in my personal life and in working with clients, the search for meaning is always worth the effort. Give it a try. You might just find that happiness really is a side-effect of meaning, but you won’t know until you begin the search for meaning.
