One of the most difficult and common human experiences is the lack of meaning in life. Almost everyone complains about him:
- Those who are financially successful and manage millions complain;
- Those who have stable, mutually loving relationships;
- Parents who devote themselves to their children complain;
- But, people who are depressed and after psychological trauma suffer especially greatly from a lack of meaning in life.
What I’m going to tell you now is not my idea. The creator of the concept of meaningfulness of being, Viktor Frankl, and his Logotherapy at one time helped me a lot to understand this issue myself. Moreover, by following this wonderful theory, I have helped many people who came to me find meaning in their lives.
So. The most important:
The meaning of your life CANNOT BE INVENTED ARTIFICIALLY or IMPOSED FROM OUTSIDE.
It can only be FOUND in each, completely unique, unrepeatable, individual human life.
Ponder this thought. Remember how many times have you tried to simply imitate others, trying to give meaning to your life? Or, to conform to the imposed stereotypes of society? A society that every day (whether you realize it or not) dictates to us “how to live, where to sail”?
How many times have you thought that the main thing is to earn more money, get married, give your children as much as possible? Buy an apartment, a car, go on vacation like everyone else.
And I saw many people who, even having had all this, suffered from the meaninglessness of their existence.
Because the main component was ignored - understanding one’s uniqueness as an individual. Your personality, which has a unique set of genes. And, with my own, unique life experience.
And, from here, the conclusion is that EVERYONE will have their own meaning in life, which truly makes life fulfilling.
Yes, for some it will be money or children. But not for everyone.
Everyone has their own meaning in life
Find the meaning of life. How can any of us do this?
You can find the meaning and purpose of your existence based on the question:
What value can I see in my life?
After all, it is the awareness of what is happening AS VALUABLE that fills our existence with meaning.
Again, I want to emphasize an important nuance: it is necessary to see what is valuable in YOUR life. At the same time, throwing out false stereotypes from your head, imperceptibly hypnotically instilled by the media and society. Also, it is worth saying goodbye to the expectations of relatives. Because all this will not allow you to meet YOUR meaning.
3 values that ANYONE can see will help us. He will see it if he wants. Provided that you look closely at your existence.
1. The meaning of life is in our experiences
This refers to experiencing oneself in relationships with loved ones. This is love, friendship. These are feelings, emotions. Also, spiritual, intellectual, and aesthetic experiences are very important and beautiful. Especially from simple moments accessible to all of us.
Nowadays they write and talk a lot about exactly this - learning to see the simple beauty that surrounds us. At some point, wisdom sets in and a person becomes able to fixate on his experiences. It is then that one can say that “I love life, I love the world.”
2. The meaning of life is creation
Oh, everyone doesn't have to be a great composer, architect, or astronaut. Each of us necessarily creates something small and quite accessible. For example, borscht cooks deliciously. Raises a child. Or, he can do something that most people can’t. Well, and most importantly, he builds his own life.
All these are acts of creation. Our task is to understand that EACH of us is a creator in some way. And every person can succeed in this. The most important thing is to stop belittling your achievements and skills. You need to see them!
3. The meaning of life is in suffering
A very interesting point that is not always immediately clear. I first understood its meaning from the words of a woman, a hospice employee.
She said that their dying people are divided into two categories. The first category dies with severe negative emotions. The second category is people who, until the end of their days, want to show others how they can remain human while dying. These people demonstrate fortitude, resilience and positivity. Until their death they live Life.
Also, as a striking example, I will cite the well-known Nick Vuychich. A man without arms, without legs, who proved to the whole world that suffering can be overcome. Even in this situation.
I’ll also give the example of the singer Madonna. She was interviewed in which she said: “I am very grateful to all those who caused me pain and suffering. To everyone who betrayed me. After all, it was by getting up from my knees every time that I became even stronger. It was thanks to them that I became who I am now.”
How to find the meaning of your life?
How to find yourself
- First of all, you need time for your fantasies and solitude, since you need to imagine yourself as the person you would like to become. You need to think about your principles and values in different areas of your life.
- You need to find and develop your own settings that will become the basis of your personal mission. All your attitudes need to be recorded not only in the brain, but also on paper, and strictly follow them, without retreating or deviating from them.
- The next step to achieving your goals is to determine the center where your principles should lie. Only personal responsibility and activity will allow you to write a plan for your personal life and find the meaning of life for yourself. Good luck to all those who have not yet determined the meaning of their life, but really want it.
The right mental attitude
Most often, people associate their mood with the external circumstances of their lives. It is believed that the more favorable the external circumstances, the happier and calmer a person feels and he will not have to waste himself searching for the meaning of life. But in reality this is absolutely not the case. Some people remember their happiest moments in life precisely at that period of their life when there was no outwardly special material incentive, even in the project.
Our trouble is that we confuse the external circumstances of our lives with our internal attitude towards these circumstances or with how we react to them, at the level of our spiritual feelings. Dejection, anxiety, self-searching and internal discord often haunt even under the most favorable circumstances.
Many people consider the main task to be copying someone else’s life, striving for someone else’s achievements.
Of course, we can learn from someone, but the main thing for each of us is to find our own self-expression, our own path, mission and goal, where we can find our peace of mind and comfort.
Don't waste precious time
Time is running out, but the question of how to find the meaning of life remains unresolved. This does not apply to everyone, of course, but to many. Meanwhile, every passing day brings us more and more gray hair, cellulite and wrinkles. In any case, no one has gotten any younger over the past few days.
Therefore, we should be very sorry for even a small drop of wasted strength, which could not bring us closer to the goal, and does not allow us to realize our strength in life for our own benefit.
No one at forty will be able to feel as much as they felt at 30. At 40 years old after a vacation we sometimes look worse than at 30 years old after a sleepless night.
Regarding the fact that work shortens life, and why waste time on it, we can only answer by saying that indeed, we spend 75% of our lives on it. This means you need to find a job to which you won’t be sorry to devote so much time so that the work is equal to life.
If you choose a job just to sell your time for a certain amount of money, and you don’t get any pleasure, then you will not become a happy person, and the search for any meaning in life will end before it even begins.
Decent lifestyle
Finding out how decent a person you are helps you understand yourself. How to understand this? A decent person is one who has order in all respects, starting with his head and ending with order in his house and the yard in which he lives. Therefore, the main goal should be to increase your influence on your own life. The words: “become the master of your life” should be perceived as a call to streamline your actions.
To be a decent and good person, you don’t need power and money. You can become good for yourself. A person needs to be rich in good deeds. To become rich for a good deed, you must at least become rich and kind. A kind but poor person cannot become rich by doing good deeds. Also, a rich but unkind person will also not be able to influence anyone else’s life or his own.
A person can wallow in luxury and die without achieving anything. Therefore, the task for every person who wants to figure out how to understand himself, first of all, should be the desire to become both kind and rich.
We can all be divided into three levels:
- At the first stage of development are people without desires. We can observe many such people who do not understand how to understand themselves, and this question does not interest them. They just live.
- The second stage of development is occupied by people of desires. Most often, such people say that they strive for something, want something, and spend all their time searching for themselves. But they cannot determine what exactly they want and what their goals are. Having only desires, but not having any goals means having huge problems. Sadly, only one percent of people can boast of their goals. Most people only claim that they want a good, promising, interesting job, a good life, a lot of money, but do not understand when they want it and how to achieve it.
- At the third stage of development is that one percent of people who understand the call: “become the master of your life,” know how to transform their desires into goals, and do not waste time searching for themselves, but are engaged in achieving their goals.
Understanding your deepest fundamental values is the only important issue for such a call as: “become the master of your life.” To do this, you will need to fulfill some obligations.
The importance of our thoughts in life
We can divide our reflections into two types: active and passive. So, passive thoughts haunt us most of our lives.
Active thinking implies the presence of paper and pen in your hands in order to record your thoughts. A person focuses for some time on a specific question, for example, how to find the meaning of life, or how to find one’s purpose in life, or how to understand oneself. He tries to find answers by writing them down on paper.
Yes, many will say that great philosophers did not find an unambiguous answer to all these questions, then why should we torture our brains with rhetorical questions. This is how most people think, while they go along with the stormy current of their everyday life. And if you ask them which philosophers we are talking about, then rarely can anyone name at least one of them whom they have read.
Many believe that life itself is the meaning of life, and some argue that children are the main meaning of their precious life.
It is necessary to give birth and raise heirs when a person knows exactly how to find his purpose in life, because then his children will not be deprived of the meaning of their lives, they will know exactly how to understand themselves, and they will not waste precious money on finding the meaning of life. time.
The meaning of human life on Earth
The meaning of human life on Earth has concerned humanity for a long time. All religions try to answer it. At the same time, each claims to be true. However, new theories appear all the time, one more interesting than the other.
I will not retell excerpts from religious teachings. Instead, I will tell you two theories that are interesting in my opinion, namely a person from science, a psychologist.
Logotherapy's view of the meaning of all human life on Earth
Logotherapy is translated as “therapy with meaning.” That is why this concept is key here. But, despite this, logotherapy DOES NOT GIVE an exact answer.
Or rather, he believes that for a person the meaning of his life on Earth is UNCOMPROSIBLE. And therefore, there is no need to ask such a global question.
And really, think about it. We live in three dimensions. These are: time, space, matter. And, today science knows at least 10 dimensions. Which explain the structure of the Universe. What happens and what meanings look like at the level of 10 dimensions - who knows? Our brains and our level of development simply cannot explain these things.
Quantum theory's view of the meaning of life
According to her, everything is information. I am a bundle of information, you are a bundle of information. Moreover, “quantum entanglement” (a term from science) suggests that ALL information is connected and interacts with each other.
And, naturally, the properties of the set of all quantum particles, which is the world, are distributed IMMEDIATELY between all particles. Moreover, an attempt to measure the property of one particle immediately changes the parameters of others associated with it.
How does this relate to the meaning of life on Earth?
Probably because meaning is incredibly comprehensive and each of us is a piece of global meaning. And, when you try to observe it, micro-changes immediately occur, spreading like a wave to the rest of the world. Like the “butterfly effect”.
I think we can use the World Wide Web as a simplified metaphor. After all, it is also a field of information where ALL information influences each other.
For example, there is a separate page with an article. Which is written, lives for itself and asks the question: what is my meaning? And if I rewrite this page, it will affect the entire Internet system. Since the page with the article will be displayed based on user requests in a different place. Plus, its semantic load will become different. This means that the location of other pages will change. That is, one page is small, but it affects the ENTIRE information system.
What is the meaning of human life on Earth?
Global meaning of life
People who endlessly delve into themselves and those around them in search of an answer to the eternal question can safely be called the most unhappy. For them, personal happiness is not the point. They turn to religion, science, philosophy, but even there they do not find the answers they need.
This situation brings nothing but disappointment. The seeker of meaning has everything to experience joy, but for him earthly goods mean nothing, because he knows that all this is perishable. Lack of interest leads to depression, as a result of which a person goes online, forgets himself through drugs, or commits suicide.
Now you know what to do if you have lost the meaning of life and don’t know why you live. Do not try to give answers to the questions of eternity, because even great thinkers and scientists could not do this. Find what will make you personally happy, develop a plan to get what you want and move towards your goals. Your meaning is to be a happy person!
The meaning of life quotes
Wise sayings about the meaning of life. Answers to this question from great people - thinkers, writers, poets, historians, politicians, philosophers
Everything that changes our lives is not an accident. It is within us and awaits only an external reason for expression through action. Alexander Sergeevich Green
Life is neither suffering nor pleasure, but a task that we must do and honestly complete it. Alexis Tocqueville
Strive not to achieve success, but to ensure that your life has meaning. Albert Einstein
Every life creates its own destiny. Henri Amiel
Life is a moment. It cannot be lived first in a draft and then rewritten into a white paper. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
It is not necessary to look at where a person was born, but what his morals are, not in what land, but by what principles he decided to live his life. Apuleius
Life - is a risk. Only by getting into risky situations do we continue to grow. And one of the biggest risks we can take is the risk of love, the risk of being vulnerable, the risk of allowing ourselves to open up to another person without fear of pain or hurt. Arianna Huffington
No one lived in the past, no one will have to live in the future; the present is the form of life. Arthur Schopenhauer
We should not be afraid of death, but of empty life. Bertolt Brecht
The moral qualities of a person should be judged not by his individual efforts, but by his daily life. Blaise Pascal
Our life is a journey, an idea is a guide. There is no guide and everything stops. The goal is lost, and the strength is gone. Victor Hugo
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Why the meaning of life is lost
This happens when you lack what you need most. For some it is self-realization, for another it is money, for a third it is family, for a fourth it is to be with your loved one. Everyone has their own main thing, but everything always comes down to one thing - the desire to be happy. Man strives for happiness. If there is no happiness, then there is complete apathy and misunderstanding of what to do next.
This condition provokes depression. Anything ceases to interest and delight. The sufferer experiences depression, fatigue, and not only the inability, but also the reluctance to concentrate on anything. He is constantly drawn to sleep or, on the contrary, suffers from insomnia. He looks into the future with pessimism, and in the present he is tormented by feelings of uselessness, anxiety, fear and guilt. Thoughts about death creep up more and more often.
Do you want to lose weight? The solution is here
Do only what you love to do
Spend as much time as possible on things that fit these criteria:
- light and pleasant, requiring no effort;
- initially important to you;
- that seem natural;
- accelerating the passage of time;
- eagerly awaited;
- making you feel like life is wonderful;
- which you consider the best in the world;
- giving pleasure by the very process of execution, and not because they are approaching completion;
- allowing you to believe that you are contributing to the fulfillment of your life purpose.
Determine what exactly you love to do and try to turn your life into a series of moments spent doing these things. These can be absolutely ordinary things. If you like to sit and look out the windows, people-watching, or humming to yourself, feel free to do it. You will notice how your mood gradually improves.
Biological purpose of man
Finding the meaning of human life is a spiritual and philosophical problem. Ideas about the purpose of existence depend on the following factors:
- Lifestyle;
- social status;
- worldview.
If a person’s living conditions are favorable, he sees the meaning of his existence in achieving his own well-being. If he is in a hostile environment, then life loses both value and meaning for him.
When searching for the purpose of existence, one must understand that what is supposed to happen will happen anyway. The most important thing is to learn to interact with reality in the “here and now” program.
Otherwise, there is a great risk of conflict with society and with oneself. Against the background of intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict, problems usually arise, which in 90% of cases are laid in the foundation of subconscious fears.
The problem of the meaning of life in philosophy
Unlike other creatures inhabiting the earth, human life is a set of values. In order to master them, you must:
- decide on the goal;
- decide on funds;
- build life routes;
- start.
The meaning and purpose of a person's life depend on his priorities. For some, the meaning of existence lies in conquering a mountain peak. Some people dream of buying a luxury car. It is vital for someone to become a first-class doctor or scientist and find a cure for cancer.
For some people, the meaning of life is to create a family. In this case, they justify the biological purpose of man, which is to procreate.
Family is the meaning of life.
Today I want to look at a virtually unknown person. But her influence had a strong impact on a very famous person.
Her name is Grace Hemingway. And yes, she is Ernest Hemingway's mother.
It was thanks to her that little Ernest developed internal fears and complexes, which he conquered all his life, wanting to appear courageous and strong.
What is known about Grace Hemingway?
North Oak Park Avenue was considered one of the best streets in the town, where there were mansions of wealthy, respected people, pillars of the local society. Here in house number 439 the Hall family lived. Its head, Ernest Miller Hall, was a respectable gentleman, co-owner of the hardware firm Randall, Hall & Co. on West Lake Street in Chicago. He was born in England, but came to America as a child, and considered this country his second homeland.
The Hall couple were wealthy and highly religious people. Their daughter Grace showed extraordinary musical abilities as a child; she played the piano, sang in the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral in Chicago, had a good contralto voice, and dreamed of becoming a singer. Her mother firmly believed that Grace's future should be exceptional and constantly instilled in her:
“Don't get your hands dirty in the kitchen. You have abilities. A woman should not give herself over to the kitchen if she can avoid it.”
Grace Hall learned these lessons quite firmly. She herself was sure that she was destined for an extraordinary future.
Fate would have it that these two men, so different from each other - Clarence Hemingway and Grace Hall - met. Soon he proposed to her. She agreed, but the dream of an artistic career haunted the ambitious Grace Hall, and in the fall of 1895 she went to New York to study singing with the then famous teacher Madame Cappiani. A year later, she made her debut in the largest concert hall in New York - Madison Square Garden. Music critics responded very positively to her, and she was offered a contract at the Metropolitan Opera .
Madame Cappiani tried to persuade Grace to sign a contract and stay in New York, and a young doctor from Oak Park bombarded her with letters, reminding her of her promise. In the end, the power of tradition proved stronger than artistic ambition. Grace Hall returned to her native Oak Park and on October 1, 1896, married Dr. Hemingway.
She believed that she had sacrificed herself , and could never forgive this - not so much to herself as to those around her. Throughout her subsequent life, she reminded her husband that she had given up such a brilliant future for his sake. She was sure that she would have made a singer no worse than the then-famous Schumann-Heink. The eldest of the children, Marceline, recounted in her book “In the Hemingway Family” how her mother told her:
“Keep in mind, my dear, Schumann-Heink has taken the place in the opera that should have belonged to me.”
His wife's self-sacrifice cost Dr. Hemingway dearly . A kind and weak-willed man, he obeyed his wife in everything, tried to free her from all the hardships of life, remembering that for his sake she gave up her artistic career. As a result, Grace Hall never worked in the kitchen and very little with the children. The doctor took on all this trouble. In the mornings, he cooked breakfast himself, fed the children, and took breakfast to his wife in bed.
For the first years of their married life, Clarence and Grace lived in the Hall house. Marceline was born here, and a year later, on July 21, 1899, a son was born, named Ernest in honor of his grandfather.
When Ernie was five years old, Grandpa Hall died and left his daughter some money as an inheritance. Grace Hemingway immediately started building a new house that would fit her ideas about social life.
Family nest of the Hemingway family
Marcelina recalled that her mother herself came up with the design of all sixteen rooms of the new house. The main subject of her concerns, the heart of the new house, was a large two-story music salon. She needed such a salon for musical evenings, for which she could gather local secular society. She was a very secular lady, Grace Hemingway - she sang in the church choir, actively participated in the affairs of the local church community and the local women's club, and was a mandatory member of various charitable societies, in particular the Protestant missionary society, designed to spread the word of God throughout the world.
A new house was built on North Kenilworth Avenue. In the same story, “ Bedtime ,” Hemingway wrote on behalf of his hero Nick Adams:
“I recalled how after my grandfather’s death we moved from the old house to another, built according to the instructions of my mother. In the backyard they burned things that they decided not to move, and I remember how all the cans from the attic were thrown into the fire, and how they burst from the heat, and how brightly the alcohol flared up. I remember snakes burning on a fire behind the house. But there were no people in these memories; there were only things."
But this is not the end of the story about his father’s collections; Hemingway develops this theme further, revealing behind small and seemingly insignificant details the complex, buried drama of family relationships.
Nick remembers how his mother constantly kept the new house clean and tidy. One day, when her father went hunting, she did a spring cleaning in the basement and burned everything that was unnecessary there. When the father returned, a fire was burning on the road near the house. “I ran out to meet my father. He gave me the gun and looked back at the fire. - What is it? - he asked. “I was cleaning the basement, my friend,” the mother responded. She went out to meet him and stood on the porch, smiling. The father peered into the fire and poked something in it with his foot. Then he bent down and pulled something out of the ashes. “Give me the poker, Nick,” he said. I went to the basement and brought a poker, and my father began to carefully rake out the ashes. He raked out stone axes, and stone flaying knives, and various utensils, and sharpening stones, and many arrowheads. All this was blackened and cracked from the fire... Father put all the blackened and cracked stone tools on a newspaper and wrapped them. “The best tips are gone,” he said. Taking the package, he went into the house, and I stayed in the yard near the hunting bags lying on the grass. A little later I carried them to the rooms.”
And Mrs. Hemingway dreamed of a different future for her eldest son. She forced him to sing in the church choir, then for some reason she decided that he should learn to play the cello. My mother clearly imagined how she would someday come to a concert of the famous cellist Ernest Hemingway... She probably thought that this would be fair compensation from fate for her unfulfilled artistic career.
Even as an elderly man, Hemingway could not forget these torments. In one of his interviews he said:
“My mother kept me out of school for a whole year so I could study music and counterpoint. She thought I had ability, but I had no talent. We played chamber music - someone would come to play the violin, my sister would play the viola, and my mother would play the piano. This cello—I played it worse than anyone else in the world.”
However, Ernie's resistance was suppressed with an iron fist, and he had to study music every day for half an hour, and then an hour.
Until the age of 17, Ernest tolerated this attitude. Then he fled to the First World War.
The relationship between mother and children did not work out throughout her life.
main problem was that she built the lives of her children the way she wanted.
But this was not at all what children were really meant for.
It is interesting to cite a letter from the young but already famous writer Ernest Hemingway. He had just published his second novel, which brought him popularity “Fiesta. And the sun rises." The mother was beside herself.
Ernest's answer is below.
