A Meaningful Life
By: Max K. Erkiletian
Tags: Life Lessons, Values, Purpose, Happiness, Meaning

No Monty Python References

Photo by YUCAR FotoGrafik on Unsplash

The success of two great novels made him confident he would be celebrated as one of the greatest writers in history, yet he felt his life had no meaning.

Leo Tolstoy looked at the acclaim given “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” and asked, “what of it?” He wrote, “I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet.”

He concluded that life was meaningless and of the future, “there was nothing ahead of me but destruction.”

Many people feel emptiness after achieving a great personal goal, such as climbing the career ladder, obtaining a material asset, or retirement. This is referred to as the paradox of the end.

“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” — Oscar Wilde

The paradox of the end asserts that striving for a goal gives our lives meaning. Once we achieve that goal, our lives cease to have meaning. The result of our success then is emptiness.

I experienced this phenomenon in my life. In college, I had three career goals — to land a newspaper job, found a magazine, and become a freelance writer. I thought that would be a pretty good life’s work. However, I had accomplished all of three goals by my mid-30s. To top it off, the freelance writing I was doing, business and personal finance, was filling my wallet, but draining my soul.

I thought I had been climbing to the top only to find I had been crawling on a desolate plain.

In addition to the professional goals I had worked 60 to 80 hours a week to achieve, I had gone through two marriages and become the non-custodial father of three children.

The weight of emptiness became so great, I could not lift myself out of my chair to mail the last article I had written for a national magazine. I called the editors I had been working with and told them I could not write anymore.

I felt morally, spiritually, emotionally, and in all my senses, crushed — as if I was pinned under a collapsed overpass of the superhighway to success.

I spent years floating from job to job, doing what I hated; founded two companies that gave me income, but no joy. Though I never spoke the words, my outlook became “it doesn’t matter what we do, we all die in the end.”

That’s about as close to Tolstoy as anything I've ever written. Perhaps it’s not that close. Maybe more like Schopenhauer.

Fortunately, Leo and I both pulled out of our tailspins by finding meaning in life. Tolstoy found meaning in his religion.

I have come to believe meaning in life is not tied to short-term goals, but to long-term values.

All of my career goals involved meeting deadlines. To achieve meaning in my life, I now focus on goals that have no terminus.

My love of family has no end. My desire to improve and be a better person will never be exhausted. I can never learn all there is to know, but I will learn all I can.

Though it may seem contradictory, my long-term values, which give my life meaning, demand that I live in the moment. Take a moment for each moment. Inhale life deeply, let it fill you, and hold it until you have to let it go. And feel no sadness that it is gone, but joy that it happened.

I confess I am not always the best practitioner of my own philosophy. I sometimes get distracted on my way to being a better person. Nevertheless, when I do not live up to my standards, I try to think of it as a lesson, not a failure.

Meaning crept into my life softly on tiptoes. As I peered into the darkness, I began to see flickers of light.

It was the little things. The sound of my children’s laughter and their wondrous questions. The feedback from petting a dog or cat. The fragrance of a flower. The embrace of a breeze. And water. The ebb and flow of waves. The sound of a stream, like high notes falling off a celestial piano.

The phrase “don’t sweat the small stuff” entered the lexicon about that time. I turned it into, take time for, and joy in, the small stuff.

This morning is an example. As I was making coffee, a movement out the window drew my attention. There on the fence was a hawk. I have seen a lot of hawks here in the Ozarks, but I had never seen this hawk, so I took the time to appreciate it while it posed briefly for me. It was not quite Emily Dickinson’s robin, but it was for me a meaningful moment.

I no longer have to look for meaning. Every day I wake up and it’s there. It has always been there, patiently waiting for me to see it.

It may just be a flicker that swiftly flies away, but each moment has meaning in my life that will stay forever.