Meaninglessness
If fear of death is king of existential anxiety, struggling to make a sense of meaning out of life is probably a close second. This type of existential vacuum is best characterized by the “what’s it all for” type questions that every healthy human being asks at one point or another. This type of anxiety also tends to be at the root of the cultural phenomenon of a mid-life crisis; when someone that has been going through the motions suddenly connects to a terrifying sense of meaninglessness and frantically scrabbles to cobble one together. Other common ways that we encounter this form of existential anxiety are in traumatic loss, frustrated desires, or sometimes even when we succeed at obtaining what we thought we wanted only to find the accomplishment attended by a sense of emptiness. A phenomenon I once heard described as “destination sickness.”
Needing a sense of purpose is akin to needing a well balanced boat when you’re heading into a storm at sea. A deep thinking counselor and Holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl stated it thusly: “Those that have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how.’ Like a boat in a storm, if we lack this existential ballast, we’re going to fall prey to the pitch and roll of the waves and be less resilient on our journeys. Frankl witnessed the extreme extension of this wisdom in the concentration camps as those lacking this sense of purpose or meaning lost heart in the face of the brutality of the Nazis and succumbed to the camps. Henry David Thoreau put it well when he observed of the society of his day that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” which is what I assume propelled him into practical experiments at Walden pond for more satisfying approaches to life. I tend to think that the same observation fits the hidden thoughts of our society, no matter how well we cover it with distraction from technology and media.
When we’re living without a sense of purpose or meaning anxiety and depression tend to be the norms. Based on my clinical work, I find that clients that are consciously aware of their sense of meaninglessness tend to experience more depression or anger. They may have bursts of effort, but experience a strong sense of futility with the results they achieve. For folks that are less aware it seems to present more as a sense of anxiety; a sense that something hard to define is not quite right. Whether the void is consciously or unconsciously experienced an absence of meaning usually leads to attempts, sometimes desperate and usually unsatisfying, to fill the void. Though I hesitate to make blanket statements, I think many of our addictions and excesses are attempts to fill this ache in our hearts.
A sense of meaning can come in so many different shapes and layers. We might find a sense of meaning from relationships that we’re in: in our identity as a father, mother, son or daughter. We might find meaning in our jobs. Some find a sense of identity when uniting in a political movement. We may find a sense of meaning in our spirituality or in our lifestyle. The ideal when crafting or discerning a sense of purpose in life is to shoot to create one that is durable. Unbeknownst to many people, the demographic with the highest rates of suicide tends to be men of retirement age. So many men fuse their sense of identity and meaning with their work, finding that when their position comes to an end, they feel adrift and despair. Similar feelings of losing meaning can happen to parents that become “empty nesters” or athletes beset by injuries. Every sense of purpose or meaning that we embrace is going to be tested at some point in the course of life, and the less durable it is, the more likely it is to fail, leaving us disillusioned. In light of this, the best ways to craft a sense of meaning is in beliefs, roles, passions, or abilities that don’t change or go away as you move through life.
My personal approach to cultivating meaning is in the deepening of my faith as a servant of Jesus. Secondary meaning for me comes through my family relationships and in trying to live on the bleeding edge of my philosophy as an agrarian homesteader; learning to walk the fine line between self-reliance and interdependence. I think the humble pleasures of the lifestyles of the past have a lot to offer us in terms of meaning. The meaning of growing, raising or hunting food, participating in the life of a small, intimate community and committing deeply to our family relationships and rearing children. Disillusionment still comes for me, but it is less violent than it was in my younger days when I was trying to find meaning through fusion with movements or my not very inspiring athletic or mental prowess.
If you feel devoid of a sense of meaning in your life, It may be unrealistic to go from no meaning to knowing your grand over-arching, durable purpose in a short period of time. You may have several transitional levels of meaning as you build towards finding one that is durable and lasting in life. Therapy can be indispensable in this process, as is receiving feedback from friends, family, mentors or pastors that know you in the entirety of your gifts, passions and flaws. I’ve met life coaches that recommend journaling and trying to fit your sense of meaning into a “mission statement” of sorts, then taking that mission statement for a test drive for a few weeks or months before revisiting and refining it. My clients know that I’m a big fan of taking new skills or insights out for some field testing to see how well they help or fit in to one’s life.
Do you have a short succinct mission statement for your life? Have you ever had your sense of purpose in life disrupted?
