The Power of Meaning: The true route to happiness

by Emily Esfahani Smith

If we report that happiness is our main value in life, as a majority of us do, then wouldn’t life in the tank satisfy all of our desires? It should.32 Yet most people would say no to a life of feeling good in the tank. The question is, why? The reason we recoil from the idea of life in the tank, according to Nozick, is that the happiness we find there is empty and unearned.33 You may feel happy in the tank, but you have no real reason to be happy. You may feel good, but your life isn’t actually good. A person “floating in the tank,” as Nozick puts it, is “an indeterminate blob.” He has no identity, no projects and goals to give his life value. “We care about more than just how things feel to us from the inside,” Nozick concludes. “There is more to life than feeling happy.”

Leading a eudaimonic life, Aristotle argued, requires cultivating the best qualities within you both morally and intellectually and living up to your potential.44 It is an active life, a life in which you do your job and contribute to society, a life in which you are involved in your community, a life, above all, in which you realize your potential, rather than squander your talents.

If hedonia is defined as “feeling good,” they argue, then eudaimonia is defined as “being and doing good”—and as “seeking to use and develop the best in oneself”46 in a way that fits with “one’s deeper principles.”47, 48 It is a life of good character.

when people say that their lives have meaning, it’s because three conditions have been satisfied: they evaluate their lives as significant and worthwhile—as part of something bigger; they believe their lives make sense; and they feel their lives are driven by a sense of purpose.

“Happiness without meaning,” the researchers wrote, “characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided.”

Leading a meaningful life, by contrast, corresponded with being a “giver,” and its defining feature was connecting and contributing to something beyond the self. Having more meaning in life was correlated with activities like buying presents for others, taking care of children, and even arguing, which researchers said was an indication of having convictions and ideals you are willing to fight for.

Durant’s letter explores why many people of his time felt like they were living in an existential vacuum. For thousands of years, after all, human beings have believed in the existence of a transcendent and supernatural realm, populated by gods and spirits, that lies beyond the sensory world of everyday experiences. They regularly felt the presence of this spiritual realm, which infused the ordinary world with meaning. But, Durant argued, modern philosophy and science have shown that the belief in such a world—a world that cannot be seen or touched—is naïve at best and superstitious at worst. In doing so, they have led to widespread disenchantment.

Those who conclude that it does not make sense give up, if not once and for all by suicide, then piecemeal, by surrendering daily to the encroaching desolation of the years”—by surrendering, in other words, to depression, weariness, and despair.

Elsewhere in A Confession he puts the question in other ways: “What will come of what I do today and tomorrow? What will come of my entire life … Why should I live? Why should I wish for anything or do anything? Or to put it still differently: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?” Because he could not answer the “why” of his existence, he concluded that his life was meaningless.

Tolstoy’s definition of “faith” is vague: he sees it as a fundamentally irrational “knowledge of the meaning of human life.” What’s clear, though, is his belief that faith ties an individual to something larger or even “infinite” that lies beyond the self. “No matter what answers a given faith might provide for us,” he writes, “every answer of faith gives infinite meaning to the finite existence of man, meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation, and death.”

His doctrine of nonresistance to evil inspired Gan-dhi ’s political campaign in India—which, in turn, helped spark Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement.

As Sartre wrote, “Life has no meaning a priori….18 [I]t’s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”

To Camus, living a meaningful life requires adopting an attitude of defiance toward the absurd, which is precisely what Sisyphus does. Sisyphus, who is being punished for deceiving the gods and attempting to escape death, does

not lament his fate or hope for a better life. Rather, in contempt of the gods who want to torment him, he embodies the three qualities that define a worthwhile life: revolt, passion, and freedom.

Camus’s biographer Olivier Todd writes, “Camus had three answers: live, act, and write.”

Putting together IKEA furniture makes people like it more, and what holds true for cheap Swedish furniture can also be applied to our lives more broadly. When we devote ourselves to difficult but worthwhile tasks—whether that means tending a rose or pursuing a noble purpose—our lives feel more significant.

Only by facing challenges head-on can we truly find meaning in our lives.

Work is a major source of identity, value, and purpose for people.22, 23 It gives them something to do with their time, a sense of worth, and an opportunity to contribute to society and to support their families. When people lose their jobs, they are losing not only their livelihood, but a powerful source of meaning.

For the novelist Madeleine L’Engle, meaning came from being a storyteller, taking the strands of human experience and weaving them into a coherent narrative. Echoing Camus, she wrote: “The only certainty is that we are here, in this moment, in this now. It’s up to us: to live fully, experiencing each moment, aware, alert and attentive. We are here, each one of us, to write our own story—and what fascinating stories we make!”

“The only certainty is that we are here, in this moment, in this now. It’s up to us: to live fully, experiencing each moment, aware, alert and attentive. We are here, each one of us, to write our own story—and what fascinating stories we make!”

Meaning and purpose and mission were beyond exact words: meaning was the feeling, the song, the moment of overwhelming spiritual fulfillment.

We were experiencing what [Rabbi Abraham Joshua] Heschel called the meaning beyond mystery.”

When people explain what makes their lives meaningful, they describe connecting to and bonding with other people in positive ways. They discuss finding something worthwhile to do with their time. They mention creating narratives that help them understand themselves and the world. They talk about mystical experiences of self-loss.

meaning arises from our relationships to others, having a mission tied to contributing to society, making sense of our experiences and who we are through narrative, and connecting to something bigger than the self.

They are the four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence.

For Laemmle and Borysenko’s patient, for instance, meaning came from loving others and connecting to them with compassion and empathy.

For Gandhi, as for young Jason, living a meaningful life involved doing some kind of good in the world so that...

Then there was L’Engle, who found meaning in understanding life as a story. Rabbi Kelman and Middleton, meanwhile, found meaning by losing themselves in something bigger, whether a spiritual ...

WE ALL NEED to feel understood, recognized, and affirmed by our friends, family members, and romantic partners. We all need to give and receive affection. We all need to find our tribe. In other words, we all need to feel that we belong.

First, they are in relationships with others based on mutual care: each person feels loved and valued by the other,

When other people think you matter and treat you like you matter, you believe you matter, too.

Second, they have frequent pleasant interactions w...

We get our self importance from others and secondly the more positive interactions we have the more their outweigh the negative ones and deste a positive outlook of life

Modern research helps explain why: chronic loneliness, scientists have found, compromises the immune system and leads to early death.

They discovered that people, young and old alike, need more than food and shelter to live full and healthy lives. They need love and care. They need to belong to someone.

Across society, people are spending less time with friends and neighbors and more time in front of television, phone, and computer screens—we are “privatizing our leisure time,”19 as the sociologist Robert Putnam puts it.

The duty members feel to serve and support one another doesn’t just spring from the community—it’s also what sustains it.

Psychologists have also discovered the value of small moments of intimacy. “High quality connections,”27 as one researcher calls them, are positive, short-term interactions between two people, like when a couple holds hands on a walk or when two strangers have an empathetic conversation on a plane.

Many of us are so caught up in our own lives, so rushed and preoccupied, that we acknowledge the people we are interacting with only instrumentally—as a means to an end. We fail to see them as individuals.

“I did the wrong thing,” Jonathan later said. “I didn’t accept his kindness. He wanted to do something meaningful, but I treated it as a transaction.”

Perhaps surprisingly, psychologists have also found that social rejection can make both the rejected and the rejecter feel alienated and insignificant.

Small inconsiderate acts, on the other hand, made them reevaluate the significance of their work, their ability to perform their tasks competently, and, even more gravely, their own worth as people.

Dutton has found that high quality connections can revitalize employees emotionally and physically, and help organizations function better. They lead employees to feel more energized and engaged at work, make them more resilient when they encounter setbacks or frustration, and help teams work together more cohesively. Feeling like part of the group can make even the most mundane tasks seem valuable and worth doing well. Yes, brief interactions can be demeaning—but they can also be dignifying.

We can’t control whether someone will make a high quality connection with us, but we can all choose to initiate or reciprocate one. We can decide to respond kindly, rather than antagonistically, to an annoying colleague. We can say hello to a stranger on the street rather than avert our eyes. We can choose to value people rather than devalue them. We can invite people to belong.

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS AND high quality connections have an important feature in common: both re...

Compassion lies at the center of the pillar of belonging.

When we open our hearts to others and approach them with love and kindness, we ennoble both those around us and ourselves—and the ripples of our compassionate acts persist, even long after we’re gone.

A story from the life of the Buddha offers an instructive parable.36 After the Buddha had his awakening beneath the Bodhi tree, he devoted his life to traveling through India teaching people of all classes the dharma, the basic principles of Buddhism—that life is full of suffering, which is caused by our endless cravings, and that we can be liberated from s...

The Buddha’s story contains a lesson for all of us. The search for meaning is not a solitary philosophical quest, as it’s often depicted, and as I thought it was in college—and meaning is not something that we create within ourselves and for ourselves. Rather, meaning largely lies in others. Only through focusing on others do we build the pillar of belonging for both ourselves and for them. If we want to find meaning in our own lives, we have to begin by reaching out.

Purpose, by contrast, is a goal toward which we are always working. It is the forward-pointing arrow that motivates our behavior and serves as the organizing principle of our lives.