While disillusionment is a young person’s prerogative, as they look around at the chaos a previous generation has made of the world, it is not exclusively so. As we watch our world spinning out of control, many of us wonder what it is all about and how we can have some meaning to our lives.
Viktor Frankl outlines three ways of finding meaning in life; creative, experiential, and attitudinal. The third of these concepts is what he determined to apply when he was incarcerated in a concentration camp, in the Second World War. He retained an attitude of giving, however small, even if only a smile, and kept himself sane and even to some extent happy. External circumstances cannot destroy our internal attitude, that is our own and we can make of it what we will.
Whenever we turn to the external world for meaning, there will be a sense of loss, of emptiness, because it is our world within that is the source of meaning and fulfilment. We spend so much time just getting through each day, meeting the needs of ourselves and others, that our inner world is nearly always neglected, and hence the sense of frustration and emptiness.
Each of us, each soul, naturally wishes to give and express all that we can be. We need to find that which is within us that we are longing to express. There are three obstacles to this:
1. We try and copy others. We see someone achieving or behaving in such a way that makes us think we should be doing the same. However, the way they are is customised for them, not for us.
2. We just feel like taking when we feel empty. We take time from others, we take from experiences, we distract ourselves, but the emptiness remains. This is because we are really longing to do the opposite of taking – we are longing to give of ourselves.
3. We live superficially. We need to flourish from deeply within and this requires nourishment, just as flowers need fertiliser and nourishment to grow. For the human being, it is reflection on our inner world that nourishes us the most. We need to find time for reflection.
So how do we create meaning? We must find what makes us truly happy. Life has a knack of revealing what it is we are meant to be giving if we look closely and pay attention. A soul on a quest to find what it is they are here for, will discover that life opens up for them and signals arrive… ‘…It’s over here that you need to be…’.
All of us have spirituality built into our DNA because we are beings of spirit, souls, beings of conscient light. We need to find that which makes us happy, naturally, so that it becomes my valuable contribution. When I am finally living the life I am meant to live, fully, and expressing all I have to express, then life feels full of meaning.
For this, we need three things.
1. Faith: that all of this will unfold.
2. Meditation: to find what is truly there inside. Without this, I will not be able to see because I will still be caught up in the external world.
3. Reflection: time to set aside for reflecting on what my meditation has shown me, what life has delivered, how other people have reacted to me.
Finally, we must be kind to ourselves, and treat ourselves with respect based on the final work of art we can become. We are all capable of great things through being who we really are meant to be. In this way, kindness and respect will be the way we treat others and that is a massive part of living a life of worth and meaning.
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Judy Rodgers lives in Peace Village, the Brahma Kumaris retreat centre in New York, and serves on a number of global initiatives for the Brahma Kumaris.