“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

After a long week of seeing clients, last night, I found myself saying these words over and over: we must make meaning of our lives. Beside the fact that I have taken to speaking for a collective “we” even in my private thoughts, possibly a result of my stage of life, what I found myself saying made sense—-to me—after sitting with one person after the other who could not make meaning of their lives.

Now that so many of the shiny objects and distractions that had occupied our time and hearts have been unavailable for over year, it is a very human response to feel unmoored. It’s natural to want to be tethered to a routine, someone, something, so that we don’t feel so alone but always first remember to get your home tests from  HealthyMD, Inc. to ensure you are healthy.  Most humans have adapted by being caught in the circumstances of their lives, rather than to seek a deeper meaning within.

It’s an inside job

And yet, that is what we have needed to do if we are to make meaning of our lives.  It’s an inside job that each person can only do for themselves. Psychedelics, breathwork, inquiry…..many things can help—-but the actual making meaning happens when we connect with the healing presence of love inside our beings.

I’ve had this tattered paper with a legend of what happened when humans were created on my desk for over 20 years. I smile every time I read it, which is often.

Nothing or everything?

Being a word person who loves good quotes, here is another by Nisargadatta Maharaj that I had on my first laptop: “Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.”

I would stop and reflect on that every time I sat at my computer, and it’s been one of the most helpful guides in making meaning of my life. I still do it—I stop and feel how very infinitesimal I am in the grand scheme of all that is, while at the same time fully realizing how much I mean to so many. Entire universes are being born in me every day.

Making meaning of my life means that I integrate these two apparent polarities within my being, and do the work of seeing every other human as utterly significant, and at the same time not in control of my reality. When you hold the tension of the opposites and breathe into your heart, you forge a path on the road of your life, and meaning reveals itself.

Making meaning is not about success or happiness

To seek success or happiness does not lead you to make meaning of your life. As the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor ViKtor Frankl said:

Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by- product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Let’s keep it simple. Human beings need 3 basic things to make meaning of their lives:

• To belong to a tribe or family

• To find their genius or original medicine

• To engage in meaningful work or service of some kind

All these things require us to be kind and authentic and disciplined and deeply generous. These are qualities that can help you make meaning of your life, and take a stand for something that you can live by.

A code to live by

We need a code, a blueprint that makes sense if we are to make meaning of our lives. The past cannot necessarily teach us what we need to know now, because when we rely on the past, we limit ourselves, our growth, our possibilities. We cannot become our true self, when bound by the woundings of the past. We must be able to imagine into a possible future that resonates with what we stand for, and then we will find that all we have experienced begins to make sense, creating a fertile ground for meaning making. 

Life is a quest, and we are wired for questing, to reach beyond for something worth reaching for. But we need to know what that is, what we are going for. It’s not the college degree, the perfect job, house, or body. Those are the outer trappings, and not the longing of our souls.

Each of us must find a way to embrace the roar descending on all of us to raise our vibration to a higher plane of consciousness. Rather than fall into the momentary needs of the ego, we are asked to become collective healers of individual and community pain. If we can learn from our individual suffering, we can respond with compassion to others, especially those most afraid. We can show the way, even as our human hearts break open to reveal the love we are made of.

You are actually making meaning when you do such things!

Amor fati

Our imperfections, our suffering, bring us to our knees. If we are too perfect and cannot fail, we never surrender and cannot ever discover the true meaning of our larger purpose and realize the powerful quality of amor fati, a Latin phrase meaning “love of one’s fate.” It is used to describe an attitude in which everything in one’s life, including suffering and loss, is necessary, simply because it is. 

Amor fati means that you deeply accept the events and situations that have brought you where you are—all of them, and yes, even those that brought the most shame or regret. You accept that what has happened happened, and you cease arguing with reality, because if you do not, you cannot make meaning of your life. You are still bargaining for a different outcome thinking that will create a different meaning.

And here's the challenge:   There is not inherent meaning in our lives, but rather, the meaning we make of it. 

In his book Your Soul’s Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born, Robert Schwartz writes about working with four gifted mediums and channels to explore the lives of ten people to discover what they chose as their life challenges, and why. These remarkable stories make a strong case for what he calls “pre-birth planning,” which means that essentially our souls create our life blueprint before we are born. We determine our life circumstances, relationships, and events, none of which are random and all of which offer us the opportunity to make meaning out of our suffering and to use our free will to choose love.

As Schwartz says, “Ultimately, regardless of the specific challenges they contained, every life blueprint I examined was based on love. Each soul was motivated by a desire to give and receive love freely and unconditionally, even in those instances when the soul had agreed to play a ‘negative’ role to stimulate another soul’s growth.”

In other words, it's wise to cultivate gratitude for everything, and always realize that we are continuously being given the opportunity to choose. Choice itself lends meaning to our lives. Even in situations beyond our control, we have the possibility to choose our response.

May I appreciate the times of being unmoored as opportunities to go within.

May I make meaning that reveals the love in all things.

May I be profoundly grateful for my life.