Create Your Life Pattern and Thrive
Choose meanings that unify your private and public selves
Meaning is something you create in your life as it unfolds. You are the only one who can do this, whether from whole cloth or meanings borrowed from others.
This essay will explore some of the sources of meaning and how you use these sources to create scripts and lines of action. Those patterns constitute the building blocks for what you do through the years.
Sources of Meaning
To have meaning is to have a settled aim or purpose attached to your life. Meaning, Viktor Frankl argued, comes from three things: the work we practice, the love we give, and our ability to display courage.
Of these three sources, work appears a primary source of a settled aim or purpose, at least in the early years.
My initial purpose in work was to become a sociologist and teach others about social structure, socialization, and deviance. Later, as I fell out of the teaching role, my purpose changed to researching personal development and how people change.
This change evokes another source of meaning: the stories we tell about our lives. As David Brooks points out, stories often tie our moments of suffering to a larger narrative of redemption.
