Do you ever wonder what the point is?
What is the point of this thing called life?
What even is life?
The Search for Purpose and Meaning
These are just some of the questions that often ring loudly in the back of my mind, sometimes louder than others.
They all point to purpose, question the meaning of life, and what it actually means to live a purposeful, meaningful one.
These are questions I’ve had for as long as I can remember.
Most of my young adult life has been spent trying to answer them and figure out what truly matters.
Why Purpose Isn’t Obvious
The challenge with purpose and meaning is that, for most of us, they aren’t obvious.
They don’t fall out of the sky and land in our laps.
Most of us don’t know what we want to do with our lives and mistake living a purposeful, meaningful life as a privilege for a select few.
However, this isn’t the case.
Purpose and meaning aren’t exclusive to a select few.
They’re something we all want, even if we don’t consciously realise it, or don’t want to accept it.
Purpose Is Created, Not Found
Here’s the thing:
Living such a life, a life of purpose and meaning, is created and cultivated by us.
The challenge is that most of us aren’t given the tools to do so. Therefore, we don’t know how.
Why Most of Us Feel Directionless
And so, we end up aimlessly sleepwalking through life, getting caught up in other people’s plans, with no real sense of direction, only to question where the hell the time has gone later on.
We lose our sense of agency and end up feeling like something is missing, but just can’t seem to put our finger on it.
That’s the thing with purpose and meaning. It’s not something we can directly pinpoint. It doesn’t work like that.
It’s not material or physical, but a felt sense, often beyond what words can describe.
So, if most of us don’t have the tools and therefore don’t know how to create a life of purpose and meaning, what do we do? How do we go about it?
I don’t believe I have the answer.
Or that there is only one singular way.
Or even that there is an answer to be found.
But I do think of it like this:
If we take a minute to look around us, the creation of everything, anything, was once an idea, a concept, in one mind.
And to bring that to life, to create anything, requires a creation process and a combination of inputs, or, as I like to refer to them, “ingredients”.
The Ingredients of a Meaningful Life
Think of it as creating a cake.
Before all of the ingredients come together through a structured, step-by-step process, there is no cake, just a bunch of ingredients with the potential to be turned into multiple things, a cake being one of them.
But through the creation process, and with the right ingredients, a cake is formed.
Obviously, for a cake, the ingredients are relatively simple and easy to get.
But for purpose and meaning?
The ingredients are a bit trickier.
The point of this analogy, even if it’s not a very good one, is to highlight that anything we create requires a process and the right ingredients.
And purpose and meaning are no exception.
Why the Ingredients Are Different for Everyone
That said, there are a few added challenges with purpose and meaning that aren’t involved in creating a cake, namely, that the ingredients often vary for each of us.
For example, what might lead to a purposeful and meaningful life for you may differ from me, and vice versa.
Two of my ingredients might be connection and shared experiences, whereas for you, it might be authenticity and self-expression.
The challenges don’t stop there. Not only do the ingredients vary from person to person, but they can also change and evolve as we grow and move through different life stages.
For example, a purposeful life in our twenties looks different from a purposeful life in our thirties, especially when we have two kids and are about to get married.
So, I think it’s fair to say that, with all of this in mind, creating a purposeful, meaningful life isn’t easy.
If it were, we’d all be living our best lives, which clearly isn’t the case. Just look at the state of the world around us.
However, if this were the case, if creating a purposeful, meaningful life were easy, would it be worth it?
I have my doubts.
Because it’s often the challenge, the climb, and the struggle that make the thing, whatever is on the other side, worth it.
So, if our best lives, often our most purposeful lives possible, were handed to us on a silver platter, I don’t believe they would actually be or feel that purposeful or worth it.
But I digress…
Life Is Lived Out Loud
Being open and willing to experiment, and trying different things based on our felt sense of what aligns with us, even if it means dancing in the fire, is an important part of the process.
In other words, it’s about giving ourselves permission to follow our curiosity, despite any negative blowback we might receive from the outside world.
It’s about realising that life is lived out loud, not in our heads.
The Trap of Overthinking
For my fellow deep thinkers and reflectors out there, this is an added challenge.
Thinking about these topics more than the average person walking down the street comes naturally to us. So much so that we can end up thinking too much, often ruminating without taking any real-world action to create the life we want.
Remember: life isn’t lived in our heads. It’s lived out loud.
We can think about purpose and meaning all we want, but until we start experimenting, following our curiosity, and taking real-world action, a purposeful, meaningful life will remain just that, a dream, a collection of ideas and concepts in our minds.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t think about these deeper topics and life questions.
In fact, I think the average person doesn’t reflect on them enough, and then wonders why they get caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life, only to question where their life has gone 10, 20, or 30 years later.
These deeper life questions matter. They can help create a purposeful life.
But no matter where you sit on the spectrum, a deep thinker like myself, or an avoider like much of society, it’s fair to say that purpose and meaning are a challenge for most of us.
Living from the Inside Out
One thingis for sure:
Purpose and meaning are created and cultivated from the inside out, not the outside in.
We create them by considering what our “ingredients” for a purposeful life are, and then experimenting with them in the real world.
This process is fluid. Life gives us feedback, and we all get different results.
That’s okay.
Purpose and meaning are different for each of us, and we can use feedback to learn and grow.
Even when some of the ingredients look similar, for example, contribution and a felt sense of connection, which I believe will be on all of our ingredient lists in some form because it’s what makes us human, they may still manifest very differently for each of us.
With this in mind, it’s important to remember that this is a personal quest.
There is no comparison.
It’s a quest we must embark on consciously if we want to live our most purposeful, meaningful lives possible.
Because if we don’t, the unfortunate default is to sleepwalk through life, only to ask, where has the time gone?, 10, 20, or 30 years later.
This just seems to be the way things are.
Remember: purpose and meaning aren’t exclusive to a special few. We create and cultivate them from the inside out, not the outside in.
If we don’t, we default to a directionless, purposeless, and often meaningless life, only to question where the time has gone in our later years.
The choice is ours.
What do you choose?
Reminders
1. Life isn’t lived in our heads. It’s lived out loud.
Thinking alone about doing the thing isn’t doing the thing and definitely won’t create meaning. Real-world action, experimentation, and lived experience are what turn ideas into a purposeful life.
2. Live from the inside out, not the outside in.
Purpose arises when our values align; we stop seeking external validation, and we build our life based on what feels true to us, not what looks good to others.
3. Give yourself permission to follow your curiosity.
We often fall into the trap that we need all of the answers before taking the first step. But, we don’t. By following our curiosity, we create movement, and movement creates clarity, feedback, and meaning over time.