Musings on Living the Meaningful Life
November 11th, 2007I have two goals that sort of supersede the goals discussed in My Primary Goals. The first is to develop a career that is some kind of creative problem solving in programming and idea-based applications. If that sounds vague it’s because I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it is. The other is to work on developing what I’ve taken to calling ‘The Poetic Life’, which is to say a life that is diametrically opposed to spending the entire time working and then coming home to watch TV. It is a more meaningful (to me, I haven’t shaken my postmodern views entirely yet) life. And yet it’s easy to define what you want in opposition to something else, but very difficult to speak of it in terms of what it actually is.
It is hiking the Andes, backpacking through Africa, working a fishing boat in South East Asia. It is bicycling across America, hiking the Appalachian Trail, and working on a wheat farm. These are experiences that I tend to call ‘raw’ because they are as close to living in the moment and as far away from abstract thought as possible.
But it is also reading difficult books, learning new ways of thinking, and new responses to situations. It is overcoming negatively ingrained behaviors. It is learning and experiencing new depths of emotion and new ways of approaching difficult emotional situations. Something that I call, for lack of a better word, being more ‘engaged’.
Of course, all of this is in relation to my extremely comfortable and safe office job. No doubt I would wish for the humdrum existence of office life if I was facing danger every day.
This truth notwithstanding, engagement and raw experiences are something that you can seek regardless of your lifestyle. Facing those aspects of life that are extremely difficult, whether due to the situation or your own behavior, is some of the most rewarding work we can do.
Typically I respond to feeling like my life is hollow by reducing those things that I view as empty. Replacing watching TV with cooking a new meal or reading a good book. Replacing surfing the internet with the creation of web pages or writing in my journal.
These things are all focused on creating changes in my life that fill it with actions I view as more meaningful. And yet they fall prey to a cycle in which I only keep them up as long as my life feels empty and then I drop them once I feel better. It is yet another version of the problem cycle (something originally discussed on moritherapy), and I could talk about the value of focusing on the positive change instead of the thing you want to change, but right now I’m more interested in trade-off between consumption and production and it’s relation to living the meaningful life.
Much of my definition of the meaningful life involves a shift in my consumption patterns. Instead of consuming TV shows I want to consume meaningful books, for example. Instead of spending the weekend doing nothing, I want to consume surrounding nature via hikes and camping trips.
This consumption is an important part of adding meaning. It expands your thinking, changes your perspective, and makes your life more rich. But it lacks something too. In a way a meaningful life based purely on consumption is like being a groupie to a poet. You read all their stuff and share a lot of the experience, and maybe hang out with them all the time. But you aren’t actually creating anything of your own. It’s a selfish and I think ultimately unfulfilling version of a meaningful life.
Production on the other hand, is much more difficult. It forces actual creative thought on your part and the effort to create, through writing or music or art or code or whatever your passion is, something interesting. Production of new work forces you to explicitly consider new thoughts and ideas, to investigate the complicated nature of your own emotions.
Of course, production of creative work isn’t something that everyone aspires to. Perhaps it isn’t part of your ideal of a meaningful life. For me though, I need to focus more on writing about the hard things, tackling the hard projects, and confronting the hard personal issues. It is from this active pursuit of difficult situations that new growth and learning occurs, and ultimately that which defines the meaningful life.
Not that I’ve every successfully completed the transition. Is it impossible? Is it just an ideal that I can’t possibly attain? I feel like there are people that I know that live much as I describe, but perhaps it’s only because I don’t know them very well.
Give me your thoughts and words.
-zot.
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November 11th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
i believe the article you’re thinking of is this one.
is what you’re talking about here perhaps what is called “right livelihood” in buddhism?
my experience with this is complex and multi-layered. what looks a bit humdrum to me (okay, let’s write ANOTHER article) might be quite a feat for someone else. on the one hand it doesn’t make sense to compare myself with others but on the other hand, it can also show me how far i already AM where i want to be.
VERY interesting topic.
November 12th, 2007 at 4:59 am
Zot,
Thank you for sharing so honestly and openly.
The questions and issues you raise here are issues which I think many people, myself included, grapple with as we try to live life in a meaningful manner.
I agree with your comment about shifting consumption patterns. Personally, I find that when I turn my focus from less meaningful consumption, such as television to more meaningful forms, such as reading broadly, going for a walk in the country, or sharing quality time with friends, that my personal happiness increases.
However, I also agree with your contrast of consumption against production. In the 1990’s an entrepreneur called Burke Hedges observed that we all have the drive to build or create to some extent. It is inbuilt within us - we were born with a desire to create and produce.
I believe fulfilling this desire significantly increases our quality of life - particularly if we can see others benefiting as a result of our work.
Zot, may I suggest one other area of your life you consider is that of relationships. I feel that sharing relationships with others, be it family, friends, colleagues or others, is crucial for quality of life.
As well as in inbuilt drive to produce, I believe we also have an inbuilt need to relate with others. Positive and meaningful relationships have mutual benefit - both for ourselves and for others.
I personally feel that the areas of relationship and production are both very important for quality of life. Consumption, including just relaxing and having fun, is also important.
As important as those areas are, there is someting even more important in my life - god.
I’m not trying to force religion upon anyone, but I would like to share what I feel is the most imporatant aspect of meaning in my own life.
To find meaning in life, I feel that I need to ask the question - why was I ever created in the first place?
Service to others and relationship with others are important, but when I look at the bible, I feel that the primary reason that we were made is for relationship with god. That relationship was broken when man sinned against god and man has felt a little nagging emptiness ever since.
However, I believe that the day I put my faith in Jesus’s death on the cross, god forgave my sins and made me free to be in meaningful relationship with him, now and in heaven.
Not that life is perfect, but I personally feel now that I am living the way god made me to live - in relationship with him.
Zot, I thank you again for sharing as openly as you have.
I wish you all the best as you grapple with these issues.
Cheers
Andrew
November 12th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Zot, this is a great post and a very inspiring one. I seem to struggle with many things similar to what you describe. To me, I see it as partly due to a need for an outlet for my creative energies. If I’m not creating something, I’m not happy. So I suppose I’d call my own journey the search for “The Creative Life”.
Jeff
November 12th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Wow, thanks everyone for your comments. This must be a topic that really strikes a cord in people.
@Isabella:
I’ve updated the link to your article as you referenced. Thanks! I don’t know enough about Buddhism to discuss ‘right livelihood’, but I’ll have to look it up. I wouldn’t be surprised though. Much of my philosophical orientation is informed by ideologies in Aikido.
@Andrew:
Thanks for the depth of your response. I mentioned the importance of relationships casually, but I think you are right that connections with people are extremely important, perhaps more so than the drive to do creative work.
My conclusions with respect to God are rather different, but I think the concept does fill an important role for some people. Thank you for your openness and willingness to bring up something that people might deride you for.
@Jeffrey:
It sounds like we are on similar pages. My next question then is how to create a living around this? I think my entrepreneur desire stems from wanting to do creative, problem-solving type work, but I feel like I am stumbling through the dark as to how to make it happen.
November 12th, 2007 at 10:17 am
“…how to create a living around this?”
That is exactly what I’ve been struggling with. I used to get my creative urge filled mostly through building software systems, but as my career has advanced and I’ve entered the ranks of senior management I don’t get to really build anything any more; I can only “live vicariously” through the younger engineers. So I fiddle around with my blog and another web project or two that I’m working on, but that doesn’t entirely scratch the itch. I’m still in search of the perfect creative outlet, one that would let me do my thing and serve as my profession as well. If you figure it out let me know!
November 14th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Yes, to the rawness of life! These are the questions that (I think) need to be struggled with. I have no answers, but this discussion has sparked some thoughts.
1) Creating, or having some agency in the world does seem to be psychologically/spiritually important. I think this is why crappy jobs where someone tells you what to do suck. I also wonder if it’s one of the reasons young adults have to leave their parents homes. Agency seems particularly challenging in this historical time too, because we are so keenly aware of how tiny most of our actions are.
2) Relationships and interactions with other people seems key. But why?
3) God or some sort of spirituality does seem to matter for lots/most people. I can completely see how it could anchor meaning. But what do skeptical non believers do?
4) One component of meaningful work/life is the feeling of complete involvement and caring for what you are doing (farming, playing music, teaching, coding). I think its the ‘flow’ feeling described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....entmihalyi
Great post and ideas.
Eric~