Finding Meaning: A Key to Resilience and Mental Wellbeing
I had an interesting conversation with a client today about meaning. The person with whom I was speaking shared with me that their experience of ageing had seemed to necessarily involve a coming to terms with an absence of meaning. Perhaps something along the lines of Satre’s idea that “life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
Of course, this is a part of the great existential reckoning that we all face, but there is also a practical side to the subject of meaning, with the potency to drastically affect our mental health – for better or for worse.
Meaning is what motivates us. It is the reason we apply will to anything at all. Throughout history, people have endured unthinkable suffering – and sometimes transmuted it into something beautiful or important – by way of the presence of meaning. While other people – sometimes enduring not much besides an absence of meaning – have lost their grip on life.
So how can we harness the power of meaning to improve our experience? I would like to offer two aspects for you to consider.
The first is that meaning is entirely subjective. We choose our own meaning: it only has to have meaning to us, and it can be anything.
I noticed a beautiful example of this while visiting India. We met with some people under the most incredible Banyan tree. And there we met a man who explained that he was the guardian of that tree. His grandmother had taken care of the tree; his mother had taken care of the tree; and now he would take care of the tree.
So he found significant meaning in his duty to the tree, and in applying care to the tree on a daily basis.
This example also illustrates a second aspect of meaning we might consider. And that is that being in service to something greater than ourselves offers us connection to something transcendent. And that connection elevates our perspective from our material circumstances, which in many cases can land outside of our control. In the case of the guardian of the tree, it is the inter-generational legacy that is transcendent. But we can find this quality in many different places – in service to our spiritual practices, to our family, to our community, or to nature for example.
I hope this might offer you some food for thought. And if you are ever feeling lost or de-motivated or depressed, perhaps exploring what has meaning to you can be supportive to finding resilience, inspiration, and connection. You can book a free 15 minute discovery call here to explore what it might be like to work with me one-on-one.
I’m currently creating a workbook on meaning, so if you head to joesummerfield.co.uk and sign up for my email newsletter, you will be the amongst the first to receive it – along with a bunch of other useful free resources.
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