Overview
What makes a meaningful and happy life? Spend some time with folks who have thought a lot about this question.
Read Meaning in Life by Eliza A. Foulke (PDF)
Life is a joyous adventure into the unknown. We advance bit by bit in our comprehension of its meaning as we grow in our relationship with the Creator. The meaning of life is found in the process of development. It is the process itself that brings satisfaction and joy.
Originally published in Friends Journal, October 1963. Used with permission.
Watch this 13 min Ted Talk by Emily Esfahani Smith: There’s More to Life Than Being Happy (April 2017)
In the video, Emily Esfahani Smith offers Four Pillars of a Meaningful Life:
- Belonging – being in relationships where you’re valued for who you intrinsically are and where you value others as well
- Purpose – using your strengths to serve others
- Transcendence – feeling connected to a higher reality
- Storytelling – creating a narrative from the events of your life
Or listen to Parker Palmer’s Commencement Address to Naropa University (May 2015), or read the annotated highlights here: The Six Pillars of the Wholehearted Life, Parker Palmer’s Spectacular Naropa University Commencement Address, Brain Pickings, August 2015
What I really mean … is be passionate, fall madly in love with life. Be passionate about some part of the natural and/or human worlds and take risks on its behalf, no matter how vulnerable they make you. No one ever died saying, “I’m sure glad for the self-centered, self-serving and self-protective life I lived.”
Queries for Reflection & Conversation
- What makes a meaningful and connected life?
- How has your understanding of a meaningful life changed across your life span?
- How does your spirituality shape your vision of a meaningful life?
- What challenges do you face as you seek to live with meaning?
- Can you share a moment or a time in your life that felt especially meaningful, or struck you as lacking meaning?