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Religious and traditional teachings have historically provided a rulebook and blueprint for how to live life in a productive, meaningful way that united you with other people under a common set of goals and principles.
This, along with the potential rewards you could receive if you were adherent, brought a sense of meaning to many people.
But the atrocities carried out under the banner of religions in recent times have been enough to push many people out of churches and other places of worship.
Along with this, a more scientific way of thinking, which has brought many benefits and resulted in huge technological advances, has also pushed out a lot of religious thinking. People of this mindset will say there is no ‘proof’ of God, and therefore that it should all be thrown out.
Of course, to progress as a society, we need to question what’s come before, but by disregarding the blueprint that once existed, we’re left without that sense of meaning and purpose that it once brought.
This isn’t something unique to the last couple of generations.
In Rollo May’s book from the 1950s “Man in Search for Himself”, he wrote about how when the established guiding principles of religious tradition break down, we look for guiding principles elsewhere.
He writes about how people turned to the approval of society and external validation as a means of finding meaning or principles: making your way up the corporate ladder, buying the latest car, following the latest trend, and ascribing to the latest popular political movement. (The latter setting up conditions for the terrors of Nazism and Communism that were happening in the decades before and after that period.)
We see the same thing today, where people have become obsessed with politics, where both sides seem to think that if their particular charismatic leader gets into charge, their life and the lives of other people will be drastically improved.
Social media has become in large part a platform for publicising our achievements, holidays, and latest purchases, as well as a comparison site for seeing how our own lives compare to others’.
We’re looking to other people to determine what we should or shouldn’t be doing.
But of course, the world is made up of people who mostly have just as little insight into how to live life as you do. So, inevitably, you come to realise that society doesn’t have the answers.
And when you realise that, there’s only really one place left to turn to:
Yourself.
“Mastering others is strength; Mastering yourself is true power.” -Lao Tzu
“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.” -Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor (A. D. 161–180)
“I am not yet able to know myself; so it seems to me ridiculous, when I do not yet know that, to investigate irrelevant things. Care first about the greatest perfection of the soul.” -Socrates
But looking inwards can be tough. Maybe you realise that you don’t really know who you are, what you actually want from life, what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at, what work you want to do, how you behave towards other people.
On further inspection, you begin to realise that you are flawed and that you are not all that you could be. But still, you don’t know what to do with yourself.
“If only I knew what I should be doing, then I’d be able to just go and do it!”, you think.
At this point, anxiety is a common response, and one attempt to relieve this is to avoid dealing with reality, turning to frequent alcohol or drug abuse to numb that pain, like so many do. At a lower level, you can distract yourself with the endless entertainment available through the internet.
But that angst doesn’t go away. Eventually, you find yourself alone, contemplating this lack of sense of identity or self, and if you don’t deal with it, it can go down a dark road, where you begin to question the meaning of life itself, and if there really is any point to it all.
This is the point where Rollo May says self-discovery is where we should turn to.
We can start to ask ourselves questions to start the process of discovering more about ourselves, writing the answers down (journaling) for more clarity.
Questions like:
“What do I want my life to look like?”
“What kind of person do I want to be?”
“What experiences do I get joy from?”
“What behaviours am I currently doing that make me feel depressed?”
“What are my relationships like?”
“What work do I enjoy doing?”
That’s the self-discovery part. Next comes self-development, where we take the information we find out about ourselves and aim to develop on it.
“What would I need to work on to be a better person?”
“What daily habits would I need to put in place to get to where I want to be?”
“What skills can I learn to put myself in the best position to do work I enjoy?”
“Do I need to address an ongoing issue I’ve been having with a loved one?”
“What are the next steps I can take?”
There are hundreds of questions just like this that you could be asking of yourself, and taking action on the answers is going to be equally as important, so the most important step is to start.
However, the main goal of self-discovery and self-development is self-fulfilment, and if you don’t know what you should be doing with your life, maybe going through this process is that thing you should be doing right now.
I don’t think you find meaning in life by asking, “What is the meaning of life?”
I think one way that you find meaning is by getting to know yourself (your tendencies, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, interests, guiding principles etc.), developing the parts of you that need to be developed, and as that better-developed version of yourself, doing the things that feel meaningful to you, as they present themselves.
And you don’t have to wait to the end of this process to find meaning, because there is no point where you finally “Find yourself” or “Fulfil yourself”.
Instead, the meaning can be found during the process, in things like:
Journalling and thinking about these types of questions.
Reading about how great thinkers have dealt with these types of questions. i.e. Reading philosophy.
Having conversations that help you clear these things up..
Working on skills that are challenging but fulfilling, and that will develop you.
Educating yourself on topics related to your work or interests.
Doing the work that presents itself as meaningful to you.
