Weekly Coaching Tip: When Meaning Takes a Vacation

 

Why should life “be” anything except exactly what it is?

Why should it be a happy experience, or fair, or without tremendous challenges? Imagine saying to a client who has just lost a loved one, “Be happy! Life is all about happiness!” You would be lucky to get out of that session without a black eye.

There is no reason for life to “be” anything—including meaningful. This truth is at the center of my brand of existential wellness coaching. I try to communicate to clients, directly and between the lines, that “meaning” is only a certain subjective psychological experience, one that many people crave but that the universe does not readily provide.

Life isn’t meant to be meaningful, any more than it is meant to be joyful or fair. Life is exactly life. When it is joyful, when it is fair, when it is meaningful, that is wonderful. We feel better. We even feel good. But when it isn’t—when meaning takes a vacation—we are obliged to live our life anyway.

A day without meaning is not a day to duck under the covers. It is still a day to live.

We can desire meaning, we can try to coax it into existence, we can get adept at “making meaning,” we can grow wise about meaning. But if, on a given day, the experience of meaning eludes us, so be it. On such days, we must still get on with the business of living. We do that by living our intentions and by ratifying our existence.

 

This is such big news to clients! It can completely alter and improve their relationship to life. No more seeking, hunting, searching, pining, questioning—just more living! The instant you “get it” that meaning is bound to come and go, just as joy comes and goes and sadness comes and goes, just as all human states and emotions come and go, you stop being frightened or demoralized when meaning is absent. Its absence is just a passing fancy!

 

Meaning will return—and in the meantime, you get to live the project of your life, making choices based on your understanding of life and on your philosophy of life. You get to decide to relate. You get to decide to create. You get to decide to be of some service. You get to decide to play with your children. You get to do one self-determined thing after another, constructing a day based on what’s important to you.

 

And if swatches of the day do not feel meaningful, say those long hours at your tiring day job, you nod: so be it. That is bound to sometimes be the case. Maybe there is something to be done there. Maybe that job can be made to feel more meaningful or maybe it is time for a change. But what no longer is needed is that terrible cry of pain: “My life is meaningless!” No, no need for that. Meaning is just on vacation.

We can desire meaning, we can try to coax it into existence, we can get adept at “making meaning,” we can grow wise about meaning. But if, on a given day, the experience of meaning eludes us, so be it. On such days, we must still get on with the business of living. We do that by living our intentions and by ratifying our existence.

 

This is such big news to clients! It can completely alter and improve their relationship to life. No more seeking, hunting, searching, pining, questioning—just more living! The instant you “get it” that meaning is bound to come and go, just as joy comes and goes and sadness comes and goes, just as all human states and emotions come and go, you stop being frightened or demoralized when meaning is absent. Its absence is just a passing fancy!

 

Meaning will return—and in the meantime, you get to live the project of your life, making choices based on your understanding of life and on your philosophy of life. You get to decide to relate. You get to decide to create. You get to decide to be of some service. You get to decide to play with your children. You get to do one self-determined thing after another, constructing a day based on what’s important to you.

 

And if swatches of the day do not feel meaningful, say those long hours at your tiring day job, you nod: so be it. That is bound to sometimes be the case. Maybe there is something to be done there. Maybe that job can be made to feel more meaningful or maybe it is time for a change. But what no longer is needed is that terrible cry of pain: “My life is meaningless!” No, no need for that. Meaning is just on vacation.

 

So, in response to a client saying, “My life feels so meaningless!”, we get to immediately move the discussion to value, purpose, and importance and away from meaning. We might say, “Okay; and what do you value?” or “Okay; and what holds importance for you?” or the more complicated, “Okay; which of your life purposes would you like to honor and live?”

 

This pivot is brilliant and simple. We move our client’s gaze away from that painful, frightening absence of meaning and toward the activity of meaning-making. I hope you’ve found this a bit eye-opening and intriguing, this central idea (and truth) that meaning is not something to seek and, only if you are lucky, find. It is nothing like that. If you’d like to learn more about existential wellness coaching and really dive into this territory, please take a look at our Noble-Manhattan Existential Wellness Coach Certificate Program. You might really enjoy it!