Seeking Meaning
Our culture is obsessed with happiness. Every material effort, everything we do, even our spiritual endeavor, is geared toward the relentless pursuit of happiness. However, research suggests that directly pursuing happiness may actually lead to unhappier people. What we should really be aiming for is a meaningful life that leads to joy, something that is grander and greater than happiness.
Studies suggest that the greatest predictor of suicide rates is not sadness but a lack of meaning to life. Suicide rates tend to be higher in wealthier and happier nations, with some of the poorest places in the world showing high levels of meaning to life. This shows that despite prosperity and even happiness, modernity has often not led to a meaningful life.
Our life gains meaning when it is part of something larger than itself, when it has a sense of purpose to it. This involves looking beyond our own needs and desires, and pursuing ways to give others what they require. Leading a meaningful life is not easy. It could even increase our unhappiness in the short term, since pursuing a larger purpose can involve sacrifice that increases our stress and anxiety. But life’s greatest gifts can sometimes be obtained only by persisting through setbacks to emerge triumphant, or by going through immense pain, such as childbirth and child rearing, because of a larger purpose. Ironically, happiness is often an indirect outcome when people look beyond their self-interest to helping others.
Ancient wisdom knew that a life with purpose and meaning is a more worthwhile pursuit than a life of happiness. Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers also highlighted the significance of discovering our Being, our higher self, when seeking a purposeful life. When we know who we are, we can align our values and capabilities to our way of life and increase the chance of leading a meaningful life that gives us sustained joy.
A famous story illustrating the life of meaning versus the life of happiness is described in the Upanishads, which are Indian philosophical texts from the Axial Age. In this story, the youth Nachiketas watches his father give one worthless gift after another during a great sacrifice. Worried about this hypocrisy, Nachiketas interrupts the sacrifice and urges him to sacrifice his own son, i.e., himself, instead. After several such interruptions, the angry father does so, sending Nachiketas to the abode of Yama, the God of Death. Because he had not been there for three nights to receive the youth, Yama offers three wishes to Nachiketas. For his first two boons, Nachiketas chooses to return to life and to learn the fire ritual that connects humanity to the gods. For his third most important boon, he wants to learn what happens to a soul after death.
Yama begs Nachiketas to choose something else for his third boon, but the youth cannot be dissuaded. Of what use is wealth and power if Death was always around, as Nachiketas points out. Finally, Yama shares the secret of the human soul’s journey after death, which depends on the kind of life he led on Earth. Did the person choose the path of pleasure or the path of good? Many choose the path of pleasure (preyas), which leads to endless misery because the happiness that comes from pleasure cannot be sustained.
Those who choose the path of good (shreyas) – a life of good conduct and good character that transcends self-interest – are freed from the clutches of Death and attain immortality. For such souls, Death holds no fear because they have led an engaged, purposeful life aligned with their values that has brought them sustained joy because it also involved giving to others. They have followed a path that leads to a realization of the essence of their being.