Why Is It So Hard to Live A Meaningful Life? - Part 1

Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions? That you're in a rut of sorts?

Or maybe you feel that your life just doesn't matter or make a difference?

Or maybe you're just bored.

I suppose we all feel like that from time to time, so you're not alone. In fact, it's been a struggle for centuries.

King Solomon wrote about this idea 3,000 years ago. After taking stock of his life and reflecting on all his experiences, he concluded that life was meaningless.

"The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless." Ecclesiastes 1:1-2

Yikes! Imagine sitting in that class. Solomon, considered the wisest man, who had it all, materially speaking, and access to anything he wanted, concluded that life had no meaning.

A Different Story

One of my heroes is Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist with Jewish roots, who survived over three years in concentration camps, enduring the harshest of conditions...slave labour, brutal weather, little food, and being arrested just months after being married.

His wife and family were killed, but he lived in part, so he could complete his life's work; a book everyone should read (in my opinion) "Man's Search for Meaning."

He developed what we know today as logo therapy, (a focus on personal meaning and purpose in life) in contrast to his contemporaries, Freud and Adler who argued man's first concern was for pleasure and power. Frankl believed that living a meaningful life was our most desperate need.

But this begs the question...

Q. How does a guy who lost his wife and parents to the Nazis, and endured years of horrific living and working conditions, watched thousands die around him, decide that life has meaning and was worth pursuing?

He didn't just survive the war, Frankl became the head of a neurological department in a Vienna hospital and saw patients privately until 1970, as well he completed the manuscript the Nazis destroyed upon his arrest.

But then Solomon, who had everything luxury he ever wanted found life to be lacking and completely meaningless.

How?

I wonder if part of the answer is that Solomon was too distracted by what he thought would bring meaning, but Frankl, when everything was stripped away could finally see what mattered most?

For Solomon, wealth, pleasure, access and prestige lead to despair and emptiness.

For Frankl, having nothing, and being a slave allowed him to see what mattered...that life mattered and meaning and purpose were worth discovering.

Could it be that we in the West, who having access to basically anything we want are faced with this same distraction of riches?

Maybe then, if you are bored, or your life seems reduced to mundane routines, or you have lost the plot of your life's story, it's because your life is filled with things that will never bring what you most desperately need...meaning.

Things like...

A larger bank account

Exotic vacations

The next level job

Scrolling for validation

Comfort

The next milestone

(What would you add to the list?)

Is it possible that the things we so desperately want and expend so much time, money and energy pursuing, actually move us farther away from the meaningful life we want?

If that is the case, then are we doomed to mediocrity or is there a way out, or maybe a way up. Can we find meaning and purpose whether we have a little or a lot?

Frankl certainly believes we can and offers some suggestions as to what constitutes a meaningful life.

Over the next few weeks I will dig a little deeper into what Frankl argues are essential to living with meaning.

In the meantime, let me ask you...

Q. Are you living a meaningful life? How?

Or

Q. Are you living a boring, mundane life? Why?

I wrote "Vantage Point: Five Perspectives to Live a Better Story" to help address this as well, so click the link above to get your copy.

Until next time - Dan