When I look back at my client notes of several years, I see some emerging patterns and themes that give me an index of how many have survived major depression, tided over seasonal affective disorders, risen above circumstantial crises, and balanced their oscillating moods which came and went to remit and recur.
The common denominating factor, even if it is fleeting, is finding meaning and purpose in life. It is tempting to get into an existential and semantic debate over ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ but I am sharing my perspective only as an experienced practitioner. While going through several struggles with clients, carving and re-carving paths, goals and destinations, we often hit a dead end. But that’s the beginning in a miraculous sense. What seems to be a point of no return can turn toward (and not necessarily turn back) something else, which may or may not be an exalted, elevated levitation to some unreachable altitude in life.
It’s a simple exploration from within to define a meaning and purpose in life, which we all have to search for, and not wait for it to be given as some divine boon after years of meditation. My apologies, but salvation does not arrive from ethereal realms. It is hard core work from within and is beyond all distinctions of gender, age, class, maturity, intellect levels and so forth. Also, it does not require a torch light to search for that meaning or purpose in life, nor is it necessary to torture oneself in an obsessive inner search. It is experiential and it’s simply there. As Robert Browning said, it’s just that “our reach must exceed our grasp, or what’s a Heaven for?”
What can this meaning be? It could be ‘to be’, ‘to attain contentment’ or ‘experience a holistic sense of self and others’. A purpose, on the other hand, can be articulated as ‘to serve’, ‘to teach’, ‘to generate’ and ‘to secure’. Does purpose give meaning to life or vice versa? I am caught in a bind here most of the times.
But again, if we view meaning philosophically, it appears as though we are asking, “Why are we here?” or “What is all this for?” or “What is this life?” And purpose breaks it down to asking, “Well, if we are here, what do we want to do with this life?” Victor Frankl shared it experientially in Man’s Search for Meaning , now famous as ‘logotherapy’, when he said “meaning is a hard fight for existence.”
Meaning and purpose co-exist in both nature and nurture, universally and humanistically. We only need catalysts to ignite them, and to disallow people stuck in the morass of their lives. In our interactive, co-dependent lives, we have encounters with family, friends, colleagues, agencies and social media each day. Some people pull their past into their present very subconsciously, with the slightest trigger of an association, and efforts made to ‘be present in the moment’ are lost. Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by the lack of meaning and purpose. That is the latent human potential. Even nature survives holocausts with no help. Aren’t we all part of that cosmos? It’s never too late, never ever, to find that meaning and purpose in life. Keep searching like a treasure hunt and it will be yours. Then there will be no looking back, and as Friedrich Nietzsche said, “those who have a why to live, can bear with almost any how.”
Dr. Lakshmi Ravikanth is a psychologist, corporate trainer and executive coach. lokhee@gmail.com
