1: Arthur Brooks was four years old.
“My dad had to visit a sick friend and took me with him,” Arthur writes in his new book The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness.
“Unfortunately, children weren’t allowed up to the floors where the patients were. So he sat me in a lobby and told me to wait there.
“After what seemed like nine hours (but was probably twenty-five minutes), I decided to look around a little,” he recalls.
“I went through one door, then another, and down a hall. I decided to turn back but couldn’t find the lobby and found myself wandering farther and farther down corridors that all looked the same.
“I couldn’t read, so the signs were no help at all,” Arthur remembers.
“When a sympathetic nurse asked what I was looking for, I couldn’t say anything beyond ‘My daddy.’
“I remember it was a terrible feeling of hopelessness,” he writes. “Together, we found my dad after another four hours (or maybe it was ten minutes), which made me happy.”
2: Which is where the idea of purpose comes in.
“To lack purpose in your life is like never finding your dad and just wandering the halls of the hospital forever,” Arthur explains. “It means you have no direction and are just meandering.”
Last week we began our exploration of the three essential elements of a meaningful life, as outlined by psychologists Frank Martela and Michael Steger.
Meaning = Coherence + Purpose + Significance
Coherence is the sense that the events and experiences in your life fit together into a larger story.
Purpose is about having goals and direction in your life. “This is the belief that you are alive in order to do something,” Arthur notes.
You can think of purpose as “the map of your life, telling you where you are in your journey and where you want to go. Your map can change as your destination changes throughout life, but you always need one.
“Without it,” he observes, “your journey becomes a big problem, just as any trip would become a problem if you didn’t know where you were and didn’t know where you wanted to go.”
Without purpose, it’s easy to feel directionless. You may be busy, but you’re not sure where you’re headed or why.
3: The final element of meaning is significance, which is about the inherent value of your life, both to yourself and others.
“To be significant doesn’t mean that when you die, you will have a long obituary in The New York Times or a street named after you in your hometown. It simply means that the world would be worse for someone you love if you didn’t exist.”
Remember It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra’s classic 1946 Christmas movie?
James Stewart plays George Bailey, a man who discovers that his life matters far more than he realizes.
On Christmas Eve, George Bailey becomes so desperate that he considers jumping off a bridge to end his life. He’s facing financial ruin and might be arrested after $8,000 goes missing.
George “sees his life as having been one of failures and missed opportunities, and he honestly feels that it would have been better for everyone if he had never existed,” Arthur notes.
At that moment, an angel appears. Together, they visit scenes showing what the world would have been like if George had never been born.
“A brother he saved from drowning in childhood perishes instead; his uncle is committed to an asylum when the bank George ran becomes insolvent without him; instead of being a wholesome place, his town is a disreputable place full of dishonest people and immoral entertainment; his wife is an unhappy woman who never found love,” Arthur details.
George comes to see how much he matters to the people he loves and cares about, and that his life has had deep meaning after all.
“The biggest error people tend to make (as George Bailey did in the movie),” Arthur explains, “is to assume that their significance is all about what they do in worldly terms—their success at work, for example—as opposed to whom they touch in deep and positive ways.”
In The Road to Character, David Brooks makes a similar distinction between résumé virtues and eulogy virtues.
“The former are your accomplishments and worldly rewards like money, power, and professional prestige,” Arthur notes, “things like your high salary, job title, and professional awards.
“To attach your sense of significance to these things is begging for trouble. First, they come and go, as George found out in the movie; you can be the hero one month and reviled the next because of a mistake or bad luck.
“Just ask any CEO,” he writes, “who was once at the top of the market and was fired a year later when the stock price tanked.
“Second, no one you truly love actually cares about these things at all. You really think your grandkids will care that you were a Forbes 30 Under 30 or a Rhodes Scholar?”
Eulogy virtues are different. They’re the qualities people would remember about you after you’re gone: Your kindness, generosity, integrity, and love. These are the qualities that give your life lasting significance.
“In the movie, the angel shows George how people around him were uplifted by his humanity and kindness,” Arthur notes.
Your significance isn’t measured by what you accomplish. It’s measured by the difference you make in the lives of others.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Why do things happen the way they do in my life? (Coherence) Why am I moving in this direction? (Purpose) Why does my life matter? (Significance)
Action: Think about the relationships you treasure. Then imagine these people loving and appreciating you, even after you pass away. Then, write down why these people have these loving memories. That is your significance.
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