A More Meaningful New Year

According to best selling author and social scientist, Arthur Brooks,

Happiness = Enjoyment + Satisfaction + Meaning.  

From his formula, we grow our capacities for enjoyment through being present and savoring the moment, we gain satisfaction through purposeful work and challenges, and meaning – well how do we develop more meaningful lives?

At Thrive, we believe that healthy spirituality helps us develop – and also question – how we make meaning of our lives. We encourage people to thrive and believe that thriving people will be more joyful because they understand what matters to them.  And, while happiness and thriving are not the same thing, I think it’s safe to say that we all want to be happier in our lives. A New Year provides an opportunity to re-evaluate by looking at how we make meaning of our lives so that we can be happier and more joyful as we move forward.

How do we make meaning out of complicated things?  

Our minds try to create order out of seeming disorder. The human brain is a meaning-making machine. From our earliest moments, it works to predict what will happen to us and our environments based upon the inputs it receives through our senses. When we are babies, we seek nourishment, safety, and care, and we learn that our cries are met with a response from our caregivers. We make meaning out of those responses. Anyone who has raised a toddler knows that they are little scientists, dropping their plates on the ground to see what the funny adults will do in response. Through this process of interacting with our environments and others, we develop beliefs about the world, and those beliefs begin to imbue our lives with meaning.

Because humans learn through relationships, we are taught certain beliefs and develop those beliefs through our interactions with others. We make meaning about who we are, who we belong to, what God requires of us, and how we should behave. We also make meaning of experiences, like suffering, both our own, and the suffering of others. Why do I suffer? Why do certain prayers go unanswered?  The human mind asks, how then should I live? How do I have a good life? Why do I consistently fall short of my expectations for myself? What is my purpose? These questions are hard to answer and worth exploring as we pursue a more meaningful life.

When Making Meaning of Things is Difficult

When I started working on this blog post, I looked up and saw that I’d missed a call from my college roommate. She lost her youngest son to a drug overdose a little over two years ago, and I don’t like to miss calls from her as you can probably understand. I immediately picked up the phone and called her back. Grief, that comes in waves, was washing over her and was suffocating her at that moment. She’s a very smart woman and she recognized her need to feel less alone, so she reached out to me, one of her oldest friends. I’m not particularly equipped to deal with this kind of grief, but I’m a familiar friend. She told me she was having a bad night. She’d had a couple of good weeks, but she’d listened to a Kate Bowler podcast and was suddenly overcome with grief. I didn’t know what to say at first, so I paused and said the first thing that came to mind, “How is your daughter doing?” The question got us going and then we talked about our families, her husband, and then I told her about the latest nonsense with my ex-husband. We ended up laughing and crying together.  

I wanted to offer something that I’ve learned through my work at the Thrive Center, so I asked her if she was getting outside and exercising, and if she was sleeping. I asked about God and if she is growing an understanding about what happened to her son. How was she making sense of what had happened to her family? I know she has faith in God, and that she believes that her son is with God. She also believes that his death profoundly changed the course of her oldest son’s life, for the better. My friend is making meaning out of a situation that is forever unchangeable. There is this loss, and a hole in her life that can never be filled. She is a mother who has lost a child.  Most of us can’t imagine a worse pain. When I hung up the phone that night, I hoped that my friend was feeling less alone, and I was left trying to make my own meaning of it all.  

I’ve lived a few years now, so I know that life is full of joys, but it is also dangerous and full of suffering.  As a mother, I find myself overwhelmed with worry, even if I believe that God holds us and keeps us. And when hurt occurs, I try to understand it and make sense of it. Yet, when faced with the pain and suffering of someone I love, I immediately want to fix the situation. Most of the time, all I can do is just offer a little love with my presence. 

When I think of all the ideas that we propose here at Thrive – about gratitude and rest and purpose – those practices are important for thriving, of course, but in moments of crisis, all we can really do is be present for people.  We can listen and care for them, feeling their losses with them, as they make their own meaning of their lives. I don’t know a better way to live than to love those around us who need our love, and often that just looks like picking up the phone.    

Sometimes We Need to Rethink

Sometimes what we believe increases our pain, for example, we might hold ourselves responsible for something that we really didn’t have any control over, so what we really need to explore is how we’re making meaning, and if our read of the situation is really “true” or useful to us. As Dr. Cynthia Eriksson says in her post on thriving through trauma, “When traumatic events happen, this drive to understand, or feel in control of a situation, can become even more complex. So many of life’s traumas do not have clear reasons or explanations. We want to understand the “cause” so that we can figure out how to avoid the same loss or trauma in the future. We also want to know that the events of life fit into something bigger. That they have significance; that they mean something.” 

Dr. Eriksson recommends exploring sources of transcendence to make meaning to better understand what is good and true. Here are some ways to explore and make meaning by looking at the big picture.  

Accessing the Transcendent

1. We can participate in spiritual activities or a faith tradition.
2. We may feel a sense of purpose or calling for a particular occupation or vocation. This calling can be the reason to do difficult work, to be present in parenting, or the calling can be a way to connect with a sense of divine relationship. 
3. We can reflect on the things that we value that point beyond ourselves – e.g. justice, beauty, love.
4. We can meditate or pray.
5. We can lament – as a way to express to a transcendent divine presence about the ways that life does not “make sense.”
6. We can spend time in nature.

Other Ideas to Explore Meaning

If you are trying to make meaning of certain things in your life, the Thrive Center’s framework for Spiritual Health offers avenues for exploration.  Click the links below for specific resources about how to develop a deeper sense of what is meaningful to you, your purposes, and how your relationships and practices are vital to making meaning.   

1. Meaning-Making (Part 1) 
2. Meaning-Making (Part 2)
3. The Practice of the Rule of Life
4. Life off Autopilot:The Power of Purpose
5. Creating Meaningful Connections
6. Thriving Through Trauma