What is meaning in life? How is your life meaningful?
I define a meaningful life as a eudaimonic life, a life where you are pursuing challenge, meaning, and happiness, instead of just simple pleasure. I think meaning in life is hard to define since you do not know who determines if your life is meaningful. What even is a meaningful life, I ask myself.
I believe that having a meaningful life coincides with being happy, since it is hard to feel happy if your life isn’t meaningful. At the same time, it is difficult to feel like your life is meaningful if you aren't happy. It's a circular cycle, and that is why meaningfulness is such a big part of happiness.
Personally, I value eudaimonia more than I value hedonia. Hedonia is just seeking pleasure, which does not make you happier. I believe that if you only look for pleasure in life with little things, you won’t gain much. Your happiness will decrease over time, since you are relying on external factors instead of internal factors. To find happiness, I think you shouldn't really have to search for meaning, but you can find meaning by challenging yourself, by making a difference in the world, and by fulfilling your purpose. Not every person knows what their purpose is, but a mixture of doing your favorite activities and utilizing your core strengths will help you find it.
I think that purpose is a strange thing, since humans don’t know that much about it. Do we have a purpose? A lot of people ask, and no one is certain of the answer. I, personally, don’t believe humans have a purpose, but I do believe we have certain strengths we can play on to achieve good things. Humans weren’t meant for anything but to contribute to the ecosystem and make offspring that could do the same. We haven’t exactly done that, with the climate change we’ve spurred with our bad choices, but we are still alive, at least I believe so at the moment.
Going back to meaning and happiness, I think you need to have both a sense of meaning and happiness to have a truly satisfying life. It is hard to achieve both happiness and meaning, since each have very loose definitions. Happiness and meaning apply to individuals, not the entire human population, so each person will have their own definition of what a happy life and a meaningful life mean. I believe that most people think that a meaningful life is part of being happy, but people also agree that being happy is part of a meaningful life.
I believe that what separates this pair of terms is how meaning is difficult to truly define. Who is your life meaningful to? Do you decide if your life is meaningful? Do your family and friends decide? Or does some other figure decide, some godly, omnipotent figure that knows everything?
In ancient Egypt, how meaningful and good your life had been was determined by a scale. Anubis, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, would weigh your heart to see if you had lead a good life. The lighter your heart was, the more good deeds you had committed during your lifetime. In ancient Egypt, that was how you measured how meaningful your life was, on a scale, with the god of knowledge recording everything. It wasn’t your own thoughts or your loved ones’ thoughts about how meaningful your life was that mattered, it was a third opinion, an opinion of higher status that mattered, and that person and the scale determined your fate in the afterlife.
Of course, I don’t really believe in an afterlife, because I believe in science. If there was an afterlife, why is life on Earth so great? What is the meaning of life on Earth, now that is the question. Why would there be an afterlife if life is already so great? Also, I don’t even know that life truly exists. Right now, I believe that everything is a matter of choices, circumstances, and science, not some god that will send you to heaven. I think that how meaningful or “good” your life is only matters to yourself or your family. And if there is some sort of afterlife, the decider wouldn’t just send you a rejection letter from heaven just because you “weren’t happy enough, or your life wasn’t good enough”. Plus, I probably wouldn’t like heaven, because I don’t believe in heaven, and I hate being proven wrong.
Anyway, about meaning, I think it is hard to decide what meaning truly is, since we do not know how our lives should evaluated, and who would even evaluate them. There probably is some “How meaningful is your life” quiz on the internet, but that doesn’t mean it is credible. (Hold up, while I take a Buzzfeed quiz about what grade I am getting in life. Update: Buzzfeed believes I get an A- in life!!)
Back to the main topic, I don’t think you should worry too much about how meaningful your life is, because that could lead you to feeling anxious about the state of your life. You should make an effort to become happier, and if it works, you will probably make your life more meaningful along the way. I believe that both meaning and happiness are critical things to have in life, but if you overthink them, you will have neither.
I believe that having a meaningful life coincides with being happy, since it is hard to feel happy if your life isn’t meaningful. At the same time, it is difficult to feel like your life is meaningful if you aren't happy. It's a circular cycle, and that is why meaningfulness is such a big part of happiness.
Personally, I value eudaimonia more than I value hedonia. Hedonia is just seeking pleasure, which does not make you happier. I believe that if you only look for pleasure in life with little things, you won’t gain much. Your happiness will decrease over time, since you are relying on external factors instead of internal factors. To find happiness, I think you shouldn't really have to search for meaning, but you can find meaning by challenging yourself, by making a difference in the world, and by fulfilling your purpose. Not every person knows what their purpose is, but a mixture of doing your favorite activities and utilizing your core strengths will help you find it.
I think that purpose is a strange thing, since humans don’t know that much about it. Do we have a purpose? A lot of people ask, and no one is certain of the answer. I, personally, don’t believe humans have a purpose, but I do believe we have certain strengths we can play on to achieve good things. Humans weren’t meant for anything but to contribute to the ecosystem and make offspring that could do the same. We haven’t exactly done that, with the climate change we’ve spurred with our bad choices, but we are still alive, at least I believe so at the moment.
Going back to meaning and happiness, I think you need to have both a sense of meaning and happiness to have a truly satisfying life. It is hard to achieve both happiness and meaning, since each have very loose definitions. Happiness and meaning apply to individuals, not the entire human population, so each person will have their own definition of what a happy life and a meaningful life mean. I believe that most people think that a meaningful life is part of being happy, but people also agree that being happy is part of a meaningful life.
I believe that what separates this pair of terms is how meaning is difficult to truly define. Who is your life meaningful to? Do you decide if your life is meaningful? Do your family and friends decide? Or does some other figure decide, some godly, omnipotent figure that knows everything?
In ancient Egypt, how meaningful and good your life had been was determined by a scale. Anubis, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, would weigh your heart to see if you had lead a good life. The lighter your heart was, the more good deeds you had committed during your lifetime. In ancient Egypt, that was how you measured how meaningful your life was, on a scale, with the god of knowledge recording everything. It wasn’t your own thoughts or your loved ones’ thoughts about how meaningful your life was that mattered, it was a third opinion, an opinion of higher status that mattered, and that person and the scale determined your fate in the afterlife.
Of course, I don’t really believe in an afterlife, because I believe in science. If there was an afterlife, why is life on Earth so great? What is the meaning of life on Earth, now that is the question. Why would there be an afterlife if life is already so great? Also, I don’t even know that life truly exists. Right now, I believe that everything is a matter of choices, circumstances, and science, not some god that will send you to heaven. I think that how meaningful or “good” your life is only matters to yourself or your family. And if there is some sort of afterlife, the decider wouldn’t just send you a rejection letter from heaven just because you “weren’t happy enough, or your life wasn’t good enough”. Plus, I probably wouldn’t like heaven, because I don’t believe in heaven, and I hate being proven wrong.
Anyway, about meaning, I think it is hard to decide what meaning truly is, since we do not know how our lives should evaluated, and who would even evaluate them. There probably is some “How meaningful is your life” quiz on the internet, but that doesn’t mean it is credible. (Hold up, while I take a Buzzfeed quiz about what grade I am getting in life. Update: Buzzfeed believes I get an A- in life!!)
Back to the main topic, I don’t think you should worry too much about how meaningful your life is, because that could lead you to feeling anxious about the state of your life. You should make an effort to become happier, and if it works, you will probably make your life more meaningful along the way. I believe that both meaning and happiness are critical things to have in life, but if you overthink them, you will have neither.