What a vast subject, with so few answers.
Another question could be :
“How do you find your purpose in life ?”
But it’s even harder to answer.
Let’s find the meaning of your life
At the lowest point of my depression, in the spring of 2018, I remember laying in my bed, thinking about how life was pointless, and that nothing gave me hope. There seemed to be no solutions, no one understood me and I couldn’t stand the idea of a “normal” life, I felt too different. I remember coming to the conclusion that nothing I could do would make life worth the emptiness I felt. I don’t know if that thought scared me because the only feeling I understood then was complete despair.
However, I was still mentally strong enough to realise that I needed to do something before I could get even worse, and I was lucky that my mom was ready to open her door to me. I moved back home, checked in with a therapist, and got the help that I desperately needed.
I know that many people don’t have the same luck that I had, family to welcome you into their home or free health care. This is why I hope that this article can inspire even a little spark of hope to help you find a small light in the darkness that is depression. I want to give you some of my insights on how to find meaning in life when everything seems meaningless.
1. Are you following your own path ?
No one chooses to be born, we are given life and then we are expected to do something meaningful with it. But in reality, a majority of us people are going through daily routines looking down at our feet, trying to go as fast as possible, and pursuing goals that aren’t aligned with who we are as individual beings. But if you sprint through life only looking down, at some point your are bound to hit a wall. Sometimes, when you can’t catch your breath anymore and stop running, you look at your surroundings and you realise that you are completely and utterly lost.
For most societies, life should go as follows:
Go to school and graduate. Go to university and be social. You should go to a few parties and have some fun, to “live a little”, but not too much! You still need to be responsible. Then you should find a job and get your own apartment. At some point, not too late, you should meet someone, but not too many because it will reflect badly on you. You should get promoted and buy a nice car. Don’t forget to get married. Get promoted again and buy a house. Do your duty as Human and reproduce. Get promoted again because having children is expensive. At some point, if you’re lucky, you can retire. Only then you can try to finally do the things you wanted to do your whole life, if you even know what they are, and if you are still fit and healthy enough to do them.
But on your deathbed, do you think you’ll want to think about all the promotions you had ?
When you ask the elderly what advice they have for new generations, they almost always have the same answer: “Enjoy your life. Do the things you love. Be more confident. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Enjoy the good moments with loved ones.”
And yet, when I wonder if I truly enjoyed the good moments in life, all I can think about is my depression. How it kept me away from even experiencing good moments, let alone enjoying the few ones that did happen.
After I graduated, all I could think about was how I needed to find my vocation, so that I could get paid and not be ashamed when people asked me what I do in life. I would be able to buy that new car that I wanted. Then I would buy a house with a big garden that I dreamed of, and have space for my dog to run around.
In reality, I came close to all those goals before my depression hit. I had a well-paid permanent job, close to my family. And yet, that was the time that I reached the lowest point of my life. After a lot of introspection, and many years later, I understood why. Because I was living a standard life, without taking into account who I was and what I needed. There was no meaning behind any of my decisions.
You can have the “perfect normal life” and be miserable.
Take the time to understand who you are, and what you want and don’t want in your life. From there, decision after decision, you’ll step forward to follow your personal path.
2. Live the moment
Another issue with our lives is that we are always looking towards the future or the past. When we look at the future, we’re always trying to be one stop ahead: “I’m doing this now so that I can have this then”. When we look to the past, we are stuck with regrets or nostalgia.
All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.
Eckhart Tolle
Let’s take an example: You have worked hard to go on that trip in the spring. You worked longer hours, stopped going out to save money, and lived as precariously as you could. You were frustrated and tired for a long time, and your only silver lining was finally going to that place you wanted to go. Then comes the trip. You’ve been stressed because you weren’t sure you packed everything that you would need. And you were also stressed because you were afraid of missing your flight.
When you arrived, you were anxious when the first moments of the holiday finally started: “I’m tired from the flight, but if I rest, I’ll be wasting vacation time”, “I need to find a bus soon if I want to have time to climb that mountain but still be back soon enough to get to the restaurant before it’s too crowded and there aren’t any seats left”, “I enjoyed reading by the beach this afternoon, but I could have been doing something I could only do here instead, something more productive”. When the last day comes, you feel sad and disappointed because the holiday is already over and you have to go back to your daily routine. All you’ve worked so hard for has passed and now it’s gone. You feel like you haven’t appreciated it enough and now it’s too late.
Life is all about being alive. It’s about learning new things and getting new skills. To be curious and discover things you might have never tried or even heard of before, to explore. It’s about doing things that light a spark within you, that make you forget about your daily life and be only in that present moment. Being alive is about growing as a person and living a life that is aligned with your values. It’s about the people you will meet along the way, and what they can teach you (directly or indirectly). Life is lived in the present.
You can still remember the past, the memories you have, and how they impacted who you are today. You can still think of the future, and where you would want to be in a certain amount of time, to set goals and dreams. The key is to not get stuck in either. If you’re stuck in the past : your wounds will block your sight, rendering you powerless to move forward. You shouldn’t get lost in the future either, the lure of anticipation, of your doubts overwhelming you, trapping you in an overthinking maze.
When you do something, be in the moment. Enjoy it. Take lessons from it. And keep going, one moment at a time.
I am not telling you to stop thinking pragmatically either, it’s important to know where you want to go and how you should go about it to get there. But don’t forget to enjoy the little moments in between where you are and where you want to go.
Your goal may be to have your own house and be independent, but you should still enjoy the meals you have with your housemates, the discussions you can have with them. The comfort of knowing that you can eat your favourite meal without even having to cook because someone else did it for you.
Your goal may be to get your dream job but enjoy the process of learning the skills you need to get there. Enjoy being at the bottom of the ladder and having the time to enjoy your missions without the pressure of responsibilities. Enjoy the process of having a mentor to guide you to reach the capacities you need to get a promotion.
I was often stuck in my head, anticipating the future. And I realised that my memory was getting worse and worse. Because, when you are stuck in your head, you are not living that present moment, and when you look back to that day when you went to some exciting place, you realise that you don’t even remember it that well. Because you weren’t actually living it when you were there.
So my advice would be to stop waiting for life to happen. If your dream is to be the best pianist of the century, don’t put the rest of your life on hold, working solely towards this dream. Enjoy all the other aspects of your life, and have different smaller objectives, more easily achieved dreams. Keep working hard to fulfil your dream but don’t waste all of your energy towards only that one goal. There are many different things you can learn along the way.
“To live is the most rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Oscar Wilde
3. Finding your purpose
This is a very important aspect to give your life meaning. But sadly there is no clear step by step instructions to discover your life’s purpose. I can only share with you a few tips to help you, but that is a journey you need to take on your own.
To find your purpose, you need to make sure your are following the advice explained above : living your own life, appreciating the present time.
When you have that down, the next step is to experience as many things as possible. It could be traveling, meeting people, trying new things and learning continually. You just have to be curious! The more you experience, the more likely you are to find your answer along the way.
There are more straight answers to the question “What is the meaning of life?”. I won’t go into details and analysing them in this post because I want to give you personal advice that came from my own experiences. I want to write from my heart and not list answers that other people wrote about. Yet I won’t pretend that I personally have all the answers, so here are other views on how to give meaning/purpose to your life:
Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s search for meaning, said that meaning can be found in three different ways:
- By creating a work (achievement, creation) or doing a good deed,
- By experiencing something (connection to nature, a culture or people) or encountering someone,
- By the attitude we take toward unavoidable pain.
Another tool that can be used in the search for a meaningful life is Ikigai. Ikigai is a Japanese concept meaning “A reason for being”. Through the following graph, you can try to situate your current situation. Or try to determine what each section is in your situation to help you find clarity.
Final advice
I would personally recommend to follow your intuition.
Intuition can be felt in your body or mind’s sensations. If you feel depressed, it may be a sign your body is sending you to warn you that something is wrong.
I believe that we get depressed when our life isn’t aligned with who we are and our personal needs. Know your values and respect them. Believe in yourself even when no one else does, only you can know what you need.
Do what makes you happy and calls to you.
Trust the process.
If you don’t know where to start, you should try to reconnect with yourself, who you really are. A good way to learn more about yourself on a deep level is to take away all the external stimuli that distracts you from being yourself, to find the answers to your questions. If this is something you want to try, you can read my article on Quitting the internet to find answers.