Making Meaning

Sometimes when I am struggling to engage in one of my spiritual disciplines like meditation or yoga, or work or parenting (yes, work and parenting are spiritual disciplines too!), I try to find meaning in the practice as a path through the difficulty.

This is certainly not a novel idea. People since the beginning of time have engaged in meaning making to try to make heads or tails of our day to day lives as human beings- including the good, the bad and the ugly. Whether it be a pyramid in Mexico, a piece of stone in England, or a set of scriptures written some two millennia ago about a young Jewish man in the Middle East.

Probably the most well-known more recent example of a meaning-maker would be Dr. Viktor Frankl. He was a Jewish psychiatrist in 20th century Europe who survived the Nazi concentration camps, and then went on to develop a therapy called Logo Therapy based on his experience of using meaning-making as a survival tool for his psyche in the concentration camps and thereafter. He chronicled this experience and the development of Logo Therapy in his now classic book, "Man's Search for Meaning."

Imagining that one could find meaning in Nazi Concentration Camps is a bold and courageous endeavor. Possibly built for those wisest and most evolved among us. So then where do the rest of us start?  I think it can begin in our small personal events and routine activities that present themselves daily.  And the payoff is tremendous because we can go from a world that is black and white to a world infused with meaning that is technicolor.

Now, for those of you who read my previous post on mystery, you may be thinking that what I'm now saying is a contradiction. Because I had suggested there may be times to withhold the inclination toward meaning making in order to be more open to the undefined mystery. But I prefer to think of it as a dialectic, both/and. Just as the bible says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time everything.

Dr. Viktor Frankl tells us the time to discover meaning in life is in 3 ways:
1.) By creating a work or doing a deed.
2.) By experiencing something or encountering someone.
3.) By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

Weaved into these three ways, I personally find the time for meaning making helpful when I am feeling exhausted and I have the thought: I just can't do this anymore. When my inner resources feel depleted and I'm not sure I can stay the course.

For example when I am driving to work and I see a plane fly overhead, and I find myself wishing I was jet setting to somewhere far away like Thailand. Sometimes in those moments I will turn my mind toward the word "seva" which is a Sanskrit word for selfless service. Now I am certainly not claiming my work at the hospital is "selfless" because I get a paycheck for the work I do. But the work does feel like "service." I do think of my vocation as a spiritual practice of service that happens 5 days a week. For me, imbuing meaning into my work helps me go in Monday through Friday especially when I'm feel burnt out or disillusioned.

Most recently I had shared that I had had two people in my life pass away, and one of those people had been a very challenging relationship for me to navigate. Which in turn made the grief process tricky to navigate as the grief process tends to mirror the relationship in my experience. But what I found to be a turning point in a grief process that seemed to have become stuck at one point was when meaning presented itself. Now I say "presented itself" because it truly felt organic. I did not in this case go searching for meaning. It seemed to just rise up on its own one day when I realized that the complicated feelings I had toward this person and their death were a smaller version of what I am likely to experience when a more significant person in my life dies. It is like I was practicing. Gearing up. And with that realization, a lot of my stuckness with this most recent death dissolved-virtually on its own. It was like a zen koan that just opened up to me all on its own.

Meaning making can also be useful in my meditation practice. Sometimes sitting in meditation can become stale. Like I'm just going through the motions. This feeling can be a real turn off to the practice and can lead to shorter sits. In these times, I may remind myself that for me a regular meditation practice is also an act of devotion to my relationship with god. It is a regular date with god- quality time. This meaning, that is from a genuine place inside of me, helps me to go the distance when I want to give up. In meditation or any other significant event or day to day event in which I want to just call it quits.

In those moments I try to turn my mind, or my attitude, back to meaning, and in so doing Dr. Viktor Frankl assures us we then can survive and thrive.  He also reminds us 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...It is this spiritual freedom-which cannot be taken away-that makes life meaningful and purposeful...The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour."

I will observe my own attitude toward life today. I will allow for meaning making to enhance and guide my journey.

Will you?