Asking the Question of Meaning [#10]

Most people don’t ask this question until late in life.

This is when most people realize that they have lived their lives according to the expectations of others, rather than according to their own truth.

To live a meaningful and joyful life, it is essential to live the question “what adds meaning to my life?”.

This is never a fixed answer. During the course of your life, you give it different meanings.

But what a meaningful life usually includes is “self-transcendence”. Doing something not for yourself but for others.

Having children can be a meaningful endeavour. Volunteering for people in need can be another way. Or working towards a liveable future for humanity - working for regeneration.

Meaningful lives always include other people, beings, or nature.

In the Western world, we are too focused on ourselves. Living hyper-individual lives isolates us from ourselves, nature, and others; we miss opportunities for meaning.

That’s why most people are suffering from a feeling that their lives are meaningless.

To prevent this from happening, it is important to ask yourself:

What creates meaning for me?

Where do I feel needed, valued, and useful?

What could I experiment with to find out if it’s meaningful to you?

The definition of a good life in our society (at least in Western academic circles) often includes making a lot of money. But how much is enough?

If you always seek more money, then there is no endpoint. There is always more to be made.

“If wealth accumulation is the game, it’s pretty boring. It’s not enough to be wealthy anymore; it’s what you do with the assets you have. And I don’t mean just financial, I mean your arms and your legs and your mind and your love and your assets as a social mover and shaker. Then your life gets really interesting.”- Kristine Tompkins

It’s not a coincidence that most successful entrepreneurs focus on meaningful pursuits after they have made a lot of money through selling their business.

After winning Game A, they play Game B.

Game A is capitalism. When you have “won” it, you can do whatever you want, as you don’t need to do anything that makes money.

Game B is solving meaningful problems: Inequality, Biodiversity Collapse, Climate Emergency, Poverty, Mental Health, etc.

Luckily, we don’t need to “win” Game A to play Game B.

We are privileged enough to play Game A with the intent to change the rules and solve meaningful problems.

Feeling our lives are meaningless is quite common. In a 2019 study, 90% of respondents between 16 and 29 in the UK said their lives felt meaningless.

Crazy. What a lost potential.

If you feel that what you do is meaningful, you are doing your best work.

If you don’t have that feeling, it is hard to motivate yourself.

Unfortunately, our system is structured in a way that many people need to work “bullshit” jobs to make money to survive.

This systemic challenge will only be solved if we quit looking at economic growth as a measure of success.

When we start looking at well-being as a measure of success, this will start to shift.

Until then, we need to take ownership of living lives that optimize for well-being, not economic growth.

I realized after 5 years of remote work, even though the causes I worked for carried meaning, I was isolated, lacked connection, and felt unhappy.

That’s why I am building a new life now. One where I still work online for half the day and then connect and work offline for the other half.

I realized that for a meaningful life, I need to be more in contact with others physically and emotionally. That’s when I took steps towards living more like that: by building a regenerative village.

The degree of change you can stomach always depends on your circumstances and courage.

My dad, for example, retired and felt lost for a while, because he got a lot of meaning from his job, where he felt useful.

Yet, he has this innate gift for wanting to help others and loves repairing things.

So he found an organization that connects early retirees with older retirees to help them out.

Multiple times a week, he visits older people who need help with some minor things: switching a light bulb, carrying something heavy, or getting help with technology. This is creating a connection and the feeling of being needed.

He also works at a repair cafe and repairs things, thereby contributing to less waste and raising environmental consciousness.

The meaning he gets through that is more than he got through his former job in an IT company.

Imagine if we were all more like my dad.

Building a meaningful life is not some quick fix.

It involves questioning the path that you are on and ideating about what could be a meaningful undertaking for you.

Then you can design experiments to verify whether your hypothesis is true by observing the results of that experiment.

You learn and adapt.

It’s a never-ending journey. And a rewarding one, too.

After all, a life of resolute decisions and quick fixes may be poorer and shallower than one of doubts and contradictions.

Here is to those who dare to live a meaningful life.

Happy regeneration,

Jonas