1: When you’re searching for something important in life, it helps to answer two questions.
“The first is general; the second, specific,” Arthur Brooks writes in The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness.
Exhibit one: Perhaps you want to find a spouse.
The general question is: “What are the characteristics of an appropriate mate?”
As in, what are the “general features of a person with whom you would, ideally, spend the rest of your life,” as Arthur puts it.
“That means someone with the right basic demographics (who is the gender you seek, for example, and not fifty years older or younger than you), who seems sane, who more or less shares your values—that sort of thing.”
Once you answer the general question, you can start trying to answer the specific question: “Who is my mate?”
Arthur’s point: “You must have an idea of what you are looking for in general to have any kind of fruitful search for the specific person.
“Of course,” he reasons, “the person you wind up with will differ in many ways from what you had in your mind, but having something in mind makes it possible to start the journey toward your goal.”
2: This way of thinking applies to more than just dating.
“While the main goal of this book is finding the meaning of your life,” he writes, “you first need to know what you are looking for generally—the meaning of life’s meaning.
“If that could be anything, from a feeling to a Ferrari, you will spend your life on a wild-goose chase, going after anything and everything, and probably ending up with something silly or completely trivial.”
Arthur believes defining meaning has become increasingly important:
Because of the seismic changes to society and culture, “people today need to be more explicit about what we are looking for before we start out on the journey to find it.”
3:Psychologists Frank Martela and Michael Steger identify three essential elements of a meaningful life.
Meaning = Coherence + Purpose + Significance
Today, you’ll explore coherence. On Monday, you’ll discover how purpose and significance fit into the picture.
Coherence is the sense that the events and experiences in your life fit together into a larger story.
“This is an understanding that things happen in your life for a reason,” Arthur writes.
Does that mean you can make sense of everything right when it happens?
Of course not.
“Sometimes things still seem to come out of left field,” he notes, “nasty surprises still occur, and it doesn’t seem to make sense when someone you love gets sick or you have an ugly breakup you didn’t expect.”
Sometimes, it’s only with time and perspective that you begin to see how the pieces fit together.
“In contrast, life feels meaningless when you see it as totally random and incoherent,” Arthur observes. “You feel powerless and utterly irrelevant in an oppressive universe, thrown about by dumb and blind forces.”
People naturally search for explanations rather than accept randomness. That’s why, Arthur writes, “people adopt all kinds of theories of life’s coherence.”
“Some people turn to science and put their faith in the idea that there are well-ordered natural forces in the universe that explain why everything happens, even if you don’t quite understand them.
“Others turn to religious metaphysics,” Arthur notes, “believing that supernatural forces, perhaps a cosmic consciousness or divine being like God, have a plan for the universe and their lives.
“Still others keep their focus firmly in the world and believe shadowy people and powerful conspiracies are the organizing factor behind much of what they experience.
“Some of these approaches are more associated with happiness than others, but all of them are an attempt at finding coherence.”
Arthur finds coherence in his Christian beliefs. “I believe God exists and has a plan for my life and the universe, a lot of which we can learn about by studying science but much of which will also always be a mystery to me.
“Faith knits together for me the parts of my life that make sense with those that do not, and it has helped me to make some radical changes over the years.”
He shares the story of leaving his twelve-year career in classical music to become a social scientist.
“For a year or so, I searched for what I thought was the divine will about how I could lift others up best. This made these two disparate career paths cohere.”
Coherence doesn’t require every chapter of your life to look the same. It requires finding the thread that connects them.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: When you look back on the different chapters of your life, what common thread connects your experiences, choices, and relationships?
Action: Identify two seemingly unrelated experiences in your life. Consider what values, beliefs, or purposes might connect them.
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