The pillars of meaning (DW#984)
Oct 21, 2021
To answer the question, "How can we each live more meaningfully?" Smith spent five years interviewing hundreds of people and reading through thousands of pages of psychology, neuroscience and philosophy.
Through her research Smith found four categories constantly re-emerging whenever people described what made their lives meaningful. Philosophers and social scientists from Aristotle to Baumeister, have also argued that meaning arises from
- Belonging to a group or community
- Having a purpose related to contributing to something larger
- Making sense of the world and your experiences and connecting with something greater than yourself and
- Building meaning through your own personal narrative and reflections. In other words, storytelling
Smith calls these categories "the four pillars of a meaningful life".
For our purposes, we can create and add meaning to our lives by building some or all of these pillars in our lives and so let us spend the next few days reflecting on what they look like in practice.
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