The Meaning of Life… in under 300 words

in:

Psychotherapy

August 27, 2011 - 5:56 am

No Comment

Perhaps you think I’ve set myself an impossible challenge here?

Not so. The meaning of life is pretty straightforward to state. Your life has whatever meaning you give to it. So the question becomes: what do people say gives their lives meaning? That’s easy enough to measure and psychologists have done exactly that.

Baumeister and Vohs (2002) have synthesised four factors. When people are asked, the more they report each of these four factors being fulfilled, the more meaningful their lives feel:

Purpose – this could be climbing Kilimanjaro, going to work or getting the kids a good education, whatever it is, meaning in life comes from reaching goals and feeling fulfilled. Even though fulfilment is hard to achieve because the state fades, people need purpose and to continually re-evaluate what purpose they are focussing on.
Values – people need a moral structure to work out what is right and what is wrong. There are plenty to choose from: some come from religion, others from philosophy and still others from your friends and family.
Efficacy – people want to make a difference and have some control over their environment. Without that, the meaning of life is reduced.
Self-worth – we all want to feel we’re good and worthwhile people. We can do this individually or by attaching ourselves to a worthy cause. Either way we need to be able to view ourselves in a positive light.

So, there you have it: the meaning of life in under 300 words.

Two words of warning. Firstly, it can be quite difficult to get all these aspects in balance at the same place, although certainly not impossible. Secondly, a meaningful life is probably necessary to be happy, but that should never stop you from developing a healthy curiosity about harvesting and adding other aspects that nourish your life on a deep level.

What gives meaning to your life?

Jamie Elkon http://shrinkrap.co.za/

The author can be found rummaging through life looking for nourishment in the early hours of the morning. He is slowly going sane by using his actual life and relationships to wake up.He lives in Cape Town with his teenaged daughter, two bassett hounds named Thelma and Louise and Digit... the cat. He hugs trees, has experienced numerous dark nights of the soul, collects incorrect Chinese packaging and tracks curious things to their lair.

Articles

in: Psychotherapy | June 9, 2017

Diary of a mid-life crisis

Friday My penis and I had a long chat in the shower this morning. It grabbed my attention by pointing out a startling white pubic hair. “Oh my God”, it said with shock and a hint of waspish judgement “Look who’s moved into the neighbourhood” I gasped and then groaned, another portent of seasons shifting. […]

in: News, Psychotherapy | March 8, 2017

The inconvenience of wings.

I’m awake in the thin hours again. I dreamt that I was flying through a furious storm with a choir of wounded Angels. So I lie here, thoughts drifting through my mind like falling feathers, some dark and threatening, others mere wisps, barely formed. The dark ones cast a pall over me- leaving tight, anxious […]

in: News, Psychotherapy | December 17, 2016

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

And now? Now that the crushing tide of work has abated briefly, just long enough to take small sips of life again. Now friend, what do you find? Being still floods me with a gentle anxiety, a deep sense of being alone in a vast universe, yet intricately, inexplicably connected to others through gossamer threads […]

in: News, Psychotherapy | October 14, 2016

Striving towards Life

Today’s selection — from When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. In May 2013, at 36, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic lung cancer. At first, Paul prepared for death, then, he and his wife Lucy decided to have a child. ” Flush in the face of mortality, many decisions became compressed, urgent […]

in: Psychotherapy | October 5, 2016

Who Rescues the Rescuer?

Being a rescuer of others in emotional distress is a popular gig. As children, many of us learnt that fulfilling this role afforded us a modicum of immunity within our often volatile family ecosystems. Being the emotional support of a sick, depressed mother, or alcoholic personality disordered father may have brought a degree of proximity […]

in: News, Psychotherapy | October 2, 2016

A Loving Equation

It’s been a tough couple of months. Love and I have had some fierce skirmishes. I’ve retreated from the field, confused, battered. Now is time to examine my strategy, courageously, honestly. “Love is the hospital for our old wounds”- Hollis wrote. Love changes us, as it works on our painful personal histories (loss, abandonment, betrayal, […]

in: News, Psychotherapy | September 30, 2016

On feeling depressed…

We’re not talking about the extreme, most paralysing, regions of despair – where external medical help is vital. Our target is rather the times when we feel – as indicated by Henry David Thoreau’s phrase – mired in moods of ‘quiet desperation’: a large, grey hinterland in which beneath an outward surface of endurance, we […]