“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion.”
—SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, The Coming of Age, 1970
A philosopher walks into a bar, and a barfly asks him, “What’s the meaning of life?” That philosopher is me, and it’s an inevitable question once people find out what I do. I’ve had this happen enough times to have a one-liner ready. I’ll first explain that it is not about the meaning of life but the meaning in life, before delivering the punch line. It has two parts, the first of which is the following: meaning in life is about making yourself meaningful to other people. It’s that simple. Forget the meaning of life. Your life becomes meaningful to you when you’re meaningful to other people: by helping a friend, for example, by sharing a special moment with someone you love, or, more simply, by connecting with a well-intentioned philosopher through buying him a much-needed beer.
When we sense that our lives are meaningful to other people, we’re able to see the value in our own lives. The Universe may be silent, but our friends and family, our colleagues and community fill our lives with their voices, energy, and vitality. And the people to whom we are most meaningful are those who care most about us. As philosopher Antti Kauppinen has argued, for those who love us, we are irreplaceable: even though anyone can buy a present for a particular child, “it will not have the same significance as a handmade gift from a parent,” as he writes.134 In close relationships, we play a unique and irreplaceable role for the other person often simply by being there.
If we know anything about human nature, it’s that we’re social animals. In “The Need to Belong,” an influential review article published in Psychological Bulletin in 1995, Professors Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary made a claim that has since become a broadly accepted—and seemingly obvious—thesis in psychology: “A need to belong is a fundamental human motivation.”135 We evolved to live in groups and to care for each other; the instinct to build strong social relationships lies deep within our humanity.
Our social nature, however, goes deeper than merely caring about others: it’s in our nature to have, as the locus of one’s life, not me but we. Being in a close relationship has been described by psychologists as a state of “including other in the self.”136 Indeed, neurological research has demonstrated that thinking about oneself and thinking about a loved one activate certain regions in the brain that aren’t activated when thinking about a stranger.137 The brain is wired to be social, and humans are designed to live together with others. As the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty has beautifully explained: “We are collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity. Our perspectives merge into each other, and we coexist through a common world.”138 Although our Western, individualistic culture has habituated us to carve especially clear boundaries between the self and other, being able to be so separate from others is a cultural achievement rather than our typical way of being. We care about the well-being of those close to us almost as much as we care about our own well-being. Sometimes, as in the case of being a parent, we may care about a child’s well-being more than our own. No matter what scientific field we turn our gaze toward—biology, neurological research, evolutionary research, social psychology, behavioral economics, even primate research—we find evidence of our need to form close and caring relationships with others, and how in these relationships the boundary between the self and the other starts to loosen.
Ample evidence shows that relatedness is, indeed, a key source of meaning for us. When researcher Nathaniel Lambert from Florida State University asked a group of undergraduate students to, in his words, “pick the one thing that makes life most meaningful for you,” two-thirds of the respondents either named a particular family member or cited, more generally, their family.139 As a category, “friends” came in second as the most frequently mentioned source of meaning. Pew Research Center got similar results when four thousand Americans were asked to describe in their own words what provides them with a sense of meaning: 69 percent mentioned family and 19 percent mentioned friends.140 Other research has similarly shown that feeling close to one’s family and friends is associated with an enhanced sense of meaning in life, and thinking about people “with whom you feel that you really belong” leads to higher ratings of meaningfulness.141 Family, friends, and other close relationships are, for many people, key sources of meaningfulness in their lives. The opposite is also true: being socially excluded leads to feelings of meaninglessness. For example, researcher Tyler Stillman and his colleagues recruited a group of students to participate in a study allegedly on first impressions. The 108 students self-recorded a few minutes of video introducing themselves.142 The researchers then supposedly showed the videos to other students and asked whether or not anyone wanted to meet the video makers: no one wanted to meet them. (In actuality, no one watched the videos; the researchers simply told the video makers they were rejected.) The results of the study aren’t surprising: the video makers rated their lives as having less meaning than another group that was spared this experience of social exclusion.
But we don’t need research to tell us that encounters with other people are a key source of meaning. As a father of three small children (two, five, and seven years old at this writing), I don’t have to look far to see which moments in my everyday life are most meaningful—coming home after work, taking the smallest child in my lap, engaging in some rough-and-tumble wrestling with the five-year-old, and holding surprisingly interesting if not intelligent conversations with the seven-year-old. Moments like these are intimate, caring, and full of warmth—and indeed are highly meaningful. So, too, are the private moments I share with my partner, when no kids demand our attention, and we can look each other in the eye and be reminded that—yes—this is the person I fell in love with all those years ago. At the risk of sounding sentimental, the list goes on—old friends, colleagues, my parents, siblings, extended family—as I’m sure yours does, too.
In the modern world, there are luckily also myriad options for people to have strong relationships and connections to one another without necessarily having the proximity of “family.” A group of my friends, for example, who have decided not to have children instead live in a collective with other like-minded individuals. A few guys from my soccer team, in turn, felt so committed to this sports community of ours that they recently got tattoos of our team logo. Some colleagues of mine devote themselves to neighborhood activity, volunteering their time, passion, and resources to make their neighborhood more active and community-centric. The beauty of the modern age is that we have the freedom to choose which sources of meaning connect the most to our lives. Unfortunately, as with much of modernity, this is both a blessing and a curse.
ARE WE EXPERIENCING AN EROSION OF COMMUNITY IN MODERN WESTERN COUNTRIES?
“No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself.”
—SENECA, Letters, circa 65 CE
I got a small glimpse of a lifestyle forgotten in our hectic and urbanized modern world when I spent a week in a small village of two thousand people accessible only by boat on the east coast of Nicaragua. The sense of community and the slower pace of life were immediately visible. I befriended a local man on my first evening and walked around the village with him; it seemed that every fourth person we met was his cousin. We always stopped to chat because no one seemed to be in a hurry. For him, this small village represented the whole of life: he had been born here; he had known these people his whole life; and he would probably grow old and die here, too, buried in the same graveyard as his parents and grandparents before him. The more time I spent in the village, the more I felt this to be the natural way of living instead of the hectic, urban, isolated, and project-oriented lifestyle back home.
Granted, the temptation here is to cast this coastal living as paradise. Being a casual observer and an outsider, I couldn’t accurately see the daily dramas or the interpersonal trials and obstacles that were surely present. Getting ill in the village, for example, could quickly turn to tragedy absent the medical care facilities we’ve become accustomed to in the West. Still, I couldn’t help but envy and marvel at their strong social bonds. The villagers were constantly surrounded by people they had known for years; their families and best friends were all within walking distance from one another, and nearly every face they encountered during the day was familiar.
For most of history, humans lived in a way that more closely resembled these villagers than today’s Western citizens. Hunter-gatherer tribes were tight and intimate communities. In agricultural societies people tended to stay put, typically living in the same community from cradle to grave. Comparatively, today’s Westerners are uprooted and isolated. The extended family has given way to the nuclear family with relatives often living thousands of miles away. Our “closest” relatives are literally no longer very close to us.
The story of community and modernization, however, is not only one of decline. In fact, individualism has given rise to new forms of community previously unavailable to the farmer or the hunter-gatherer. While we might have lost out on the rootedness and the proximity that once characterized communities, we’ve gained the freedom and the ability to join communities based on our personal values and interests. Being born into a community where one doesn’t fit in, for one reason or another, might have led to a lifetime tragedy. Nowadays it often gets better—one can join various communities that better match one’s own worldview and interests. A new high school, college, job, or neighborhood often present opportunities for one to build an identity in the eyes of others anew.
Traditional communities have also often been quite oppressive, enforcing certain norms and worldviews, and involving rigid hierarchies where, for example, women have had an inferior status. Although some researchers have sounded the alarm bell around the erosion of community in the US and the Western world, perhaps most famously Professor Robert Putnam with his influential book Bowling Alone, the research community seems to be divided as to whether or not any sharp decline in the sense of community has taken place in the last few decades.143 In fact, some research even suggests that more individualism can be associated with more social capital—the more individualistic a state is in the US, the more prone its people are to trust strangers, belong to various groups, and have higher levels of social capital. And the same holds true at a cross-national level: a comparison of forty-two countries similarly showed that higher levels of individualism were related to more group memberships and a higher trust in strangers. Thus some researchers like Jüri Allik and Anu Realo argue that “individualism is a precondition for the growth of social capital—voluntary cooperation and partnership between individuals are only possible when people have autonomy, self-control, and a mature sense of responsibility.”144
The relation of modernization and individualism to our sense of community and belonging is complex. Some forms of community might be declining while other forms seem to be increasing. We might have lost the lifelong proximal communities of our ancestors, but we’ve gained the chance to voluntarily join communities where our individuality is able to bloom with like-minded people. Nevertheless, if we are to make our lives more meaningful—and the lives of our children and grandchildren—we need to work together to strengthen the forms of community available to us. Meaning is about connecting.
Often the best and easiest way to improve your own sense of well-being and meaningfulness is to switch your lens: concentrate less on yourself and more on being connected with others.
ONE FORMULA FOR A WELL-LIVED LIFE
A few years before Sebastian Vettel became the youngest Formula 1 world champion—and a subsequent four-time champion, global icon, and multimillionaire—his doctor, Aki Hintsa, gave him a piece of paper and an envelope. The task: Write down the names of the most important people in your life and why they’re important. Vettel did as he was asked and sealed the paper in an envelope. Hintsa advised him to hold on to it, saying, “When success comes, many more people are going to want to be a part of your life. . . . Check this letter to see who your true friends are and remember to stay in touch with them.”145
Doctor Hintsa used this exercise with many of his clients, often asking them to make a list of people they would take on a several months’ long sailing trip or to a remote island. Think about it yourself. Who would you bring? Can you identify the people who are truly important to you and with whom the mere fact of being together is a source of vitality and meaning? Once you’ve identified them, think about how much time and energy you currently devote to them. Furthermore, think of your interactions with them: Have you been authentic and true with them, with yourself?
Hintsa’s clients included many high-functioning, hardworking successful individuals, who, it turned out, often sacrificed and neglected meaningful family relations and friendships for their careers. One business executive, for example, had the habit of taking his wife and children on luxury vacations to exotic locations. There, he’d sign the kids up for various adventures and send his wife to the spa. With his family cleared out, he’d log long hours working outside the office. If that happens every once in a while it’s not a big deal, but if this behavior turns habitual, which it had for him, it becomes problematic in terms of the big picture of his life. Children want adventures and spouses may appreciate a good spa day, but if gaining these luxuries means losing out on familial closeness, no amount of exotic vacations can remedy a strained parental or marital relationship. Hintsa’s typical advice for both his athlete and executive clients was the same: spending time with the people you love should be at the top of your priority list.
When Finnish researcher Leena Valkonen interviewed eleven- to thirteen-year-old kids for her dissertation about what they wished from their parents, one of the most frequently mentioned wants was time. A twelve-year-old boy wrote, “Parents should remember that family comes first and work only after that.” And this family time need not be extraordinary. Most children want to do regular, everyday things with their parents—cooking, talking, cleaning, listening to music, playing catch, just hanging out. As one child put it, “Parents should ‘just be’ at home.”146
Back to young Sebastian Vettel. Vettel took the insight from Hintsa’s exercise to heart. A few years later, when he became the global icon he is, everyone wanted a piece of him. He remembered the contents of the envelope and, over the years, carefully protected his inner circle, finding time for his closest family and friends in the midst of frenzied media attention and fame. He’s still together with his childhood friend Hanna Prater, with whom he has two kids. He’s realized that no matter the level of success you achieve, the secret to a meaningful and well-lived life is having a few good people in your life you can truly trust, care, and love. Whether you’re on a cramped sailboat together for many months or shored up on a remote island together or simply withstanding the daily grind of what it means to be human, these are the people you want in your corner, no matter what. They make your life better and you’d do the same for them. If you’re lucky, your name is written down in an envelope that belongs to someone you love.