Finding Meaning in Life

Many of us live our lives at a hectic pace, sitting in traffic, worrying about our mortgage, taking care of ageing parents or young children. But every so often we all pause to wonder why. Does our life, or life generally, have any meaning or purpose? Such thoughts become especially acute when a loved one passes away. There are some, of course, who can live quite happily without ever thinking this way, and there are others who decide that life is simply meaningless and never return to these questions. But most of us, particularly as we age, long to live our life at a deeper and more meaningful level.

We all spend the majority of our lives with a particular sense of self-identity. Most of us feel ourselves to be a single, consistent self, the subject of our experiences and author of our actions. And the identity of this self or 'ego' is built up in large part from memory and anticipation. In other words it is rooted in linear time. You are you because of all the things you did in your past and all the things you expect to do in the future. We experience this self as somehow 'inside' the body looking out at the world. When our fragile and temporary body ceases to work, we feel, the time-trapped ego will be gone forever. If you feel yourself to be nothing but an isolated, separate, individual ego existing inside a fragile, ageing body, you are more likely to experience life as meaningless, futile and even absurd. Meaning arises from a sense of deep connection and belonging beyond the confines of this little self.

It is not just the Eastern mystics who connect our psychological suffering to over-identification with the ego. The American psychologist Abraham Maslow, for example, worked out what he described as a 'hierarchy of needs'. First, argued Maslow, an individual needs food, water and shelter. Once these needs have been met, people reach out for sexual intimacy, love, friendship, creative success and so on. Beyond these, argued Maslow, is the 'peak experience' in which the sense of individuality, separation and isolation is transcended altogether. These broader identities can of course be negative and even dangerous. Obvious examples are nationalism and political extremism. To a fanatical nationalist only the power and triumph of his cause or nation matters; his own life is irrelevant.

But broadened identity can also be positive and healthy. For example, many people experience a profound change when they have children. You often hear parents say "I cannot remember how I used to feel before my child was born". The deep, selfless love of a parent can be tremendously liberating. Their purpose in life becomes the loving and nurturing of their son or daughter. They sometimes observe in their child the expressions and gestures of their own parents and even feel the survival of their child beyond their own death to be almost a form of immortality, as their own genes live on.

Sometimes individuals are so moved by the suffering of others that they lose themselves in the commitment to a cause. There are nurses and carers for the elderly who will tell you that their job gives their life all the meaning they could ask for. Others become engaged in children's charities or animal welfare or even in overseas projects building orphanages and so on. Again, this sort of dedication not only provides a sense of meaning and purpose but lifts the individual out of their narrow, isolated self.

Others claim that the discoveries of evolutionary biology could provide us with a new form of belonging. The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess described this as 'Deep Ecology'. The Deep Ecologist calls for a new relationship between humanity and nature. If every living thing is related, and all spring from the same macro-molecule, then we have a deeper and more permanent identity, an identity so deep that it is no longer adequately limited to the ego or body. We are part of a web of life. The realization of this new, greater sense of self does not mean we lose individuality, merely that we see it in a wider, greater context.

Finding a greater meaning and purpose in life, or simply finding a new inner peace, begins only when we cease to think of ourselves as nothing more than isolated, competing egos and begin to broaden our identity to include our children, our community and even our planet.