Read This If You’re Struggling to Find The Meaning of Life
What makes life worth living
Image credit: Lexica
Once again, you find yourself in a mid-existential crisis. All those big questions are getting to you, and they’re getting you down.
“Why am I here?”
“What is the point?”
“What’s the meaning of life?”
It feels like the weight of the world is crushing you. You’re sure you’re having a panic attack.
But what if the meaning of life is simple?
Instead of panic, you find peace. That’s what we’re covering in today’s article.
Can’t Live Alone
You need others to survive, especially in today’s world. Everybody has different roles, and every role is necessary.
The truth of the matter is you can’t live life completely on your own, no matter how alone you feel.
Somebody, somewhere, helps provide for you. You don’t live independently of the world. You’re dependent on the world for things like:
Food
Clothes
Shelter
Work
Connection
You no longer live in primal times. And even when we did, we still split up our roles, making each other necessary for long-term survival.
As it turns out, we need each other. We need human interaction. We need attention and validation. We need to share our lives with each other. We need to make memories with each other.
Imagine being the only person left in the world. There is no other human or animal life. You may be able to do things you always wanted to do, like travel the world, but what good is travel if you don’t get to experience the cultures that created it?
Photo by Gyan Shahane on Unsplash
The Killer Disease
This all boils down to one thing: loneliness. That’s the disease of our species that is slowly killing us.
When you perceive you’re alone, you get this deep-rooted feeling of isolation. That loneliness claws at your guts and will make you do things you never thought.
You don’t want to be the only person in the world. You don’t want to be alone in its deepest sense.
Loneliness used to eat me up inside. It ate away at me because I felt so isolated from the world.
I felt disconnected from my friends and family. I felt discarded. And as cheesy as it is, I felt unloved. You need this love.
You can pretend you don’t like people all you want. You can pretend like you don’t need anyone. But it’s going to cost you.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
The Cost of Loneliness
When you look around you, who is in your life? Your parents, siblings, teachers, friends. Every person has an impact on you, some more than others.
Brene Brown, a researcher on vulnerability, brings up this concept of belonging. We all want to feel this sense of belonging. When we feel like we don’t belong, Brown identified three potential outcomes:
You live in constant pain
You deny it, ensuring you will pass it on to those around you
You find the courage to own the pain and develop empathy for yourself and others.
“When we feel isolated, disconnected, and lonely, we try to protect ourselves. In that mode, we want to connect, but our brain is attempting to override connection with self-protection.” — Brene Brown
We Belong Together
Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than yourself. It’s a primal need.
You need to feel connected to others because if you don’t, you don’t know who you are.
People aren’t mirrors. They’re more like blenders. You get a mixed-up assortment of personalities and beliefs based on who you’re around.
But if you had nobody around, there’s nobody to reflect yourself back to. You become a lifeless, empty void sucked dry.
You don’t just need people to survive. You need people to define who you are in relation to them.
I wouldn’t know who I am without my family and friends. They give me meaning.
Photo by Chi Lok TSANG on Unsplash
Our Shared Humanity
Humanity is tough to describe. What is it that makes us human (apart from the obvious)?
Is it our wide range of emotions? Our ability to attach meaning and purpose to life? Or something completely different?
Sharing your humanity is what leads to connection. It leads to meaning. That’s why social connection is so important.
That’s why loneliness is a problem. You’re lacking the foundational emotional connection that you need to survive.
At the end of the day, we’re all human. We have faulty belief systems. We get jealous. We get mad, sad, and happy, and that’s why we need to have empathy.
It’s hard to hate people close up.
Welcome to being human.
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Maggie Kelly is a freelance writer who writes about mental health, self-help, and psychology. Contact at maggiepkelly@gmail.com
