There are three facets of meaning - (i) coherence, (ii) purpose, and (iii) significance.
What is the meaning of meaning? It is presumptuous to urge ourselves to make now meaningful yet avoid this fundamental question. Frank Martela, a philosopher and researcher of psychology, and Michael Steger, professor of Psychology, proffered that research on meaning in life should be underpinned by three facets of meaning - (i) coherence (ii) purpose, and (iii) significance. I’m going to stick my neck out and propose coherence be tweaked to congruence. I will explain why.
Congruence
Martela and Steger defined coherence as “a sense of comprehensibility and one’s life making sense”, that one’s various experiences in life fit one another and forms a pattern that makes understanding, even predicting, the whole possible. This is not unlike a coherent essay where words form comprehensible sentences, sentences form paragraphs, paragraphs form the eventual essay, without any of the words, sentences, or paragraphs sticking out like a sore thumb and confusing the reader.
Predictive (and hopefully reliable) patterns are critical for our connections and interactions with the environment, as well as, one another. When such predictions fail, it is not hard to imagine that order then gives way to chaos, threatening the cadence of life, thereby disrupting comprehensibility, thus meaning. When our actions do not bring forth the intended outcomes, it is not hard to imagine that distress and anxiety will build and we begin to question whether what we do is meaningful.
I’m suggesting congruence in place of coherence because there is another dimension to making sense of our lives that is beyond experiences - our values and beliefs. If like me, your first encounter with the word congruence is during secondary school mathematics - the nightmare of congruent triangles - then I would like to transport you back in time as I explain the rationale for breaking away from coherence. Back in secondary school when learning about congruent triangles, we are taught that two triangles are congruent if they are of the exact same shape and size. Hence, what do I mean by congruence as a facet of meaning? I am asking us to evaluate whether our actions are of the exact same shape and the exact same size as our beliefs. Is what we do on a daily basis, be it at work or at home, congruent to our beliefs? If not, there will be a lot of frustrations and a distinct feeling that we are lacking meaning in life.
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. - Viktor E. Frankl
However, we need to be mindful; sometimes our beliefs need changing, not the activities or intended goals. Speaking of goals, the second facet of meaning is purpose.
Purpose
Purpose is direction and goals. What's next? How might the next step be taken?
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. - Viktor E. Frankl
Again, it is not hard to imagine that an inability to take the next step forward will result in a state of stasis and aimlessness, which brews feelings of futility and scuppers motivation. Exercising our freedom to choose what's next is a meaningful act.
Significance
Finally, Martela and Steger posited that significance is about “a sense of life’s inherent value and having a life worth living”. This hints at an evaluative aspect of meaning making, an ensuing need to judge positive from negative so as to justify our existence. Seen in this light, significance is the value we bring to the people around us and whether the tasks that we perform at work and at home are beneficial to people other than ourselves. Like it or not, as humans, we are social. We need to be able to contribute to the larger society in order for us to have a sense of meaning.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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
Why make now meaningful?
I have included a fair number of quotes by Viktor Frankl in this post for a reason. There aren't too many situations, if any, more dire than the Holocaust from which one needs to make meaning out of. While in the concentration camps, Frankl observed that those who did not lose their sense of meaning in life survived much longer.
Right through to present day, experiencing meaning in life remains an important contributor to well-being, health, and lowered risk for mortality. Conversely, meaninglessness is often the gateway to criminal behaviour, addiction, and depression. The resultant void does not stay empty; it will be filled by hedonism, nihilism, hatred, resentment, materialism.
Meaning saves life through congruence, purpose, and significance.
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