Are you searching for or creating a meaningful life?

by Shikha Rastogi | Apr 1, 2022 | Beliefs, Perspective

Many years ago, when I started down the spiritual path it was because I needed a way out of my own suffering. I was desperately trying to find answers and meaning in everything that was happening in my life. Although I had been suffering for a long time because of all the losses I kept experiencing in my life, however, it wasn’t until that day in 2007 when I finally realized that if I didn’t change something in my life, I wouldn’t be able to continue living in suffering for much longer!

Today when I look back on all those years of suffering, I know that I was tightly holding on to the idea of how a life should be and because the life I was living at that time didn’t fit those expectations, my mind created all that suffering, and I just got caught up in a vicious cycle of losses which led to failed expectations, and which led to suffering.

Since then, I have understood a few very important aspects of being human. First, in the last few decades it appears that most people started living their lives by following the ‘societal script’ of what a successful life is. This script lays the path forward for your life and one of the key aspects of this path is getting the best possible education to get the highest paying job. The belief behind getting the highest paying job is twofold – one, you are somehow better than others and more worthy because you have a great title and a high paying job and second, this high paying job is the key to your future happiness and fulfilment.

Second aspect of being human are those people who follow this ‘societal script’ like the Holy Grail and somewhere down the road either in their thirties, forties, or fifties when they seem to have achieved and acquired all those material possessions that used to take an entire lifetime to acquire, these people are hit with the feeling of emptiness. So, they embark upon this journey and try to do something meaningful this time around hoping it could give their lives the missing meaning and fill the vacuum left behind by “having it all”. The hope is that they may be able to get back on the happiness road by doing meaningful work.

Third aspect of being human are those people who although are severely burned out by working longer hours and hate their jobs, however, the idea of leaving such jobs or careers does not seem to be an option for them because of their belief that if they opt out of this race to success, they will be left behind and their friends and co-workers will win this ‘life competition’ where having more in every aspect of life is the only measure of a successfully lived life. Such people convince themselves that this is how modern-day life and living is and they somehow try to find moments of meaning, happiness, and peace within their hectic lifestyle.

No matter which category you belong to, the key is to let go of this societal script and have the courage to update and upgrade your definition of success. But in order to define success for yourself, you first need to be able to connect with yourself. You need to understand who you are what it is that makes your heart sing. Because what makes your heart sing is what connects you with your soul and if you choose to do what connects you with your soul, you will automatically find the meaning you are looking for.

But leaving jobs or switching careers in pursuit of meaning may not be the solution for everyone for a variety of reasons. And if you are one of those who can’t make this switch, I would like to let you know that the way we approach a meaningful life is all backwards in our society! The truth is we cannot go in search of meaning and somehow find a meaningful life. Meaning isn’t something that’s out there that needs to be found. Meaning is within you, close to your heart and all you have to learn to do is find a way back to yourself, to get connected with yourself and that’s when you will uncover exactly what meaning and a meaningful life is to you. And once you have understood that the next step is to act.

Many years ago, as a teenager I used to love writing poems but as I started to grow up, I bought into the good education, high paying job script and left the thing which made my heart sing behind until the deep suffering brought me back to writing again more than two decades later. It felt like a full circle moment when I wrote again and started my blog back in 2016. I haven’t looked back since and have also started a podcast called Loving Our Fears where I share lessons from my own experiences of living a life of deep suffering. I however do all my writing and podcasting while working a full-time job where I have created strict boundaries around my work hours and only put in the 40 hours necessary. That’s how I have created meaning in my own life for now until I choose to travel in a different direction.

Fast forward to today, the last year and a half of living through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has presented exactly that opportunity – to get connected with yourself. Many months of isolation during this pandemic forced us to get disconnected from the outside world and its noise and gave us the space to re-think, re-assess, and re-evaluate our lives. If viewed from a spiritual perspective this is exactly the kind of collective suffering and the scale and magnitude of such suffering that carries the potential to force people to re-think, re-evaluate and re-assess the meaning of their lives. And that’s exactly what has been happening and why some people have been leaving their jobs to try something new and different in hopes that this change would re-connect them with the lost meaning in their lives while others continue to find that meaning in their existing jobs and lives. But this trend is only getting started!

So, no matter who and where you are in your own journey to find meaning, know that your meaning is exactly where my meaning was – close to my own heart!