Editor’s note: In this post one of our members explores the meaning and purpose of life in a comprehensive and deep fashion. He especially sees it in relation to the inevitability of pain, illness, and death for us both as individuals and as a community.
Purpose and Meaning in Life by Zadock Malesi
“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how” -Nietzsche
Ever wondered what purpose and meaning in life is about? In my view, to define the “why” in Nietzsche’s quote above is, to all intents and purposes, to get a deeper sense of personal fulfilment, clarity and life’s meaning. Is that easy? I do not think so! There are many things that we struggle with in life, but none comes close to finding purpose and meaning in our lives. Like many of us, I often struggle with that question as I did recently when I was taking care of my late dad for two and a half years. As expected, this came with a lot of anxiety, fear, and depression with very little or at times no care for myself. In an attempt to get a clearer picture of purpose and meaning of life, I realized that pain, loss, illness, and death are inevitable in life. They are transformative and force us to change or even renew ourselves periodically. The efforts we make as ways of coming to terms with the related suffering, evoke questions of purpose and meaning in very many fundamental ways and in the process make our lives interesting, challenging and above all endurable.
In fact, growing up as a child, I naively deluded myself or so I believed that as human beings we are special, not vulnerable and somehow beyond the ordinary laws of biology and destiny. That in case of any misfortune or tragedy, there is always a rescuer whether human or divine on standby who watches and protects us. Unfortunately, and with the benefit of hindsight such naïve realism is a big part of what we grapple with later in life, especially when we live as we do in modern times lonely, in isolation and separated from others and the world.
The search for meaning in life is so slippery and elusive especially in an environment like that of caregiving, because both purpose and meaning arouse distressing thoughts and feelings touching on the ultimate concerns of life: Our ultimate loneliness and isolation especially as we age gracefully with all the associated challenges, the slippery nature of our ability to have freedom to live our lives as we wish when just a few months or years ago we were strong enough and full of energy and did not require anybody’s help or care. The feeling of dissatisfaction, self-pity and alienation is so personal, pervasive and almost feels permanent that one is left ashamed, dependent, afraid and at times angry. The most poignant feeling, however, is the inevitability of death of each one of us and our loved ones.
Most of us believe that finding purpose in life is to answer questions such as who am I? why am I? what am I? and as Christians and more important, whose am I? In a sense, meaning in life is also a constant, deliberate, and desperate search for one’s authentic identity in a world full of human beings with multiple identities. These questions encourage us to have a perceptive sense of life. More to the point, to live a life of purpose inevitably leads to having meaning in life. That is to say, a sense of significant contribution and impact on others and planet earth.
The golden rule “Do to others what you would like others to do to you” is a common and universal principle that is found in one form or another in almost all philosophies and faiths of the world. In a sense, it has a lot to teach us about purpose and meaning in life. It is a pathway to finding personal autonomy, peace, and serenity of mind, freedom from guilt, fear and shame, happiness, success and fulfilling friendships and relationships with other people. I will go further and state the case that as a continental African, the search for purpose and meaning dovetails so well with the African philosophy of Ubuntu; loosely translated as “I am because you are and you are because I am.” Meaning all of us human beings are inevitably interconnected and in absolute inclusiveness of oneness, as we struggle for meaning and understanding of self, others, the community and the sacred. That we have been called for a higher and profound sense of purpose of mattering to others because we have all been created in the image and likeness of God.
Simply put, having purpose and meaning in life is what gets us up every morning to return to those daily chores, responsibilities and struggles of life even if they feel boring, grinding and sheer drudgery or worse still if we feel discouraged and disappointed. It is when we feel and experience moments of awe, mystery, and wonder in the presence of the divine, nature, people, events, transitions, and bonds of friendships and relationships that most decisively and fundamentally define and shape our ways of seeing and moving into the next phases of life.
Equally important, it is asking:1. How happy are we with ourselves? 2. How happy are we with our work and workplaces? And lastly 3. How happy are we with our friendships and relationships!? It is as Christians having faith in God as a way of coming to terms with the spiritual and existential question: What is the meaning of life? Put differently, to believe in God is to realize that life has meaning. Besides that, it is fair to say that life has meaning when we find satisfaction and fulfilment through our personal and collective ways of making sense of human diversity; in our dynamic sociocultural, secular and sacred structures, systems and institutions. For example, the aesthetics we find embedded in symbols, images, beliefs, and values of art, music, dance, culture, and literature guides and shapes our lives in profound and meaningful ways.
Moreover, life has meaning when we confront without any procrastination or denialism the multi-crises and demands of modern life whether mental, physical, social, cultural, religious, political, economic amidst limited and ever diminishing resources, loss of stability of jobs, lives of friends and families, and the subsequent and inevitable uncertainty, sadness, pain, and suffering.
When understood and embraced properly, painful and excruciating experiences inspire us to understand new meaning and purpose in life. Constantly and perpetually reinventing and recalibrating ourselves for the here and now and the future is, I dare say, the purpose and meaning of life. It is the basic part of the process of change, growth and development of human beings for meaningful, productive, fulfilling and pleasurable lives.
“Those only are happy who have their minds on some object other than their own happiness…on the happiness of others…on the improvement of mankind…even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end.” -John Stuart Mills
