The Issue of Meaning, Part II
Earlier this month, I discussed how a felt sense of meaning is derived from achievement, engagement with others, and consciously choosing the attitude we bring to painful experiences. Permit me now to move from the specific to the general by discussing a common thread among these methods for experiencing meaning, and that is how they all require us to engage in life.
Engaging in life is requisite for experiencing meaning because only something close to us can evoke our emotion and motivate our attachment. When situations are looked at from a distance, their context is often distorted and they seem to lose their value. This is not to say that observing situations with impartiality is not valuable. Only that the habit of observing without participating takes the vitality out of life. Thus, like most things, some middle ground needs to be sought.
Successful engagement requires us to temporarily forget about ourselves and become immersed in the task at hand. It requires us to take a chance and become involved in activities whose end result we cannot predict NOR SHOULD WE TRY. For nothing saps motivation more than trying to anticipate the future course of events, yet we do it all the time.
Although engagement enables us to feel alive and provides us with many rewarding experiences, it also puts us at risk for experiencing disappointment, frustration, anger, hurt, and loss. It is important to remember however, that avoiding engagement does not ensure a painless existence, although it does virtually guarantee a gray one.
In summary, engagement is the means we have to find and experience a felt sense of meaning. It requires us to let go and temporarily forget about ourselves. From these experiences we become more complex individuals because we have permitted ourselves to be changed by them. And finally, through engagement we experience the gifts of life.
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