Meaning and Purpose

 

What is meaning and purpose?

Meaning and purpose for our ancient ancestors was bound in survival: food, water, safety, and procreation. Life was lived in the moment. And then over the eons life got increasingly more complex and technological advancement lightened our load–flip a switch for light, turn a key to travel, turn a knob for water, press a number to cook. These advancements also allowed for leisure relative to our ancient ancestors who toiled day and night just to survive. Today, most modern people generally work eight hours a day, five days a week to earn off-time or leisure time, typically thirty-five hours a week against a forty hour work week.

Meaning and purpose today is defined by the individual. There is no grand universal meaning and purpose, and if there was, whose would it be? Religion claims it’s their province but that’s totalitarian. If the Universe knew us and cared about us, there’d be no natural disasters, no disease, no poverty, no starvation, no war, no crime, no inequality, no chaos. There is no Heaven, Shangri-La, Nirvana, or Utopia. They’re myth.

It’s a tried-and-true mistake to assume that meaning and purpose have to be something “grand,” something spectacular lying just beyond the horizon (or in the case of religion–lying just beyond death). This assumption leaves people grasping for the unattainable and forever disillusioned when, in fact, purpose and meaning are right under our noses. Ditch the “grand” and what’s left are the small everyday things–interacting with family and friends, talking to a stranger, walking the dog, cooking, shopping, reading, exercising, exploring, learning, playing, working, engaging in art and hobbies, or just relishing “earned” relaxation. These are real actions, not chimeras. If you stop and think about it, your every waking moment is filled with meaning and purpose. 

Quit rushing towards the abyss. 

How do you suppose it would be if you attained that “grand” thing you’re chasing? Would that be the end of it and eternally fulfilling? Is that the end for, say, a Nobel Prize winner, the winner of an Oscar, someone rising to the apex of a profession or skill? And if so, what’s the next direction from the apex? Down? And then up again, down again–like Sisyphus, to be forever disillusioned? Ever wonder why many of those celebrities people worship often end up living lives of misery and dead from drug overdose (e.g. Michael Jackson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Matthew Perry, Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, Prince) after having achieved their idea of the “grand” meaning and purpose? It’s because they didn’t.

“Disillusion” follows the shattering of a fantasy or the revealing of an unpleasant reality, causing a person to see a situation, person, or concept as it truly is rather than how they imagined it. And if “acceptance” doesn’t follow, what does? Depression? Alcohol and drug abuse? Failed relationships? Recklessness? Subterfuge? Crime? Suicide? 

And all because you thought walking your dog had no meaning and purpose.