P. THE MEANING OF MEANING; THIS IS NOT A WORD GAME (1)

MEANING AS "DEFINITION"   (1) 

Vaclev Havel has said, "The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of life, but that it bothers him less and less." Perhaps this is because we've thought of the question as an aerobic exercise and we've no time for that. But I believe there is a way to approach and explore the question in an uncomplicated and straightforward manner than sets the trivial overcomplification aside and gets right to the point. It begins with an understanding of the word "meaning" itself. 
In the middle of the last century, two Oxford philosophers, C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, wrote a book entitled The Meaning of Meaning in which they documented no less than sixteen different meanings of the word. Of these sixteen I think there are four directly related to the question we're raising about "the meaning of life." All four of these questions are of absolute importance as we undertake our personal quest and it is possible to be careful and concise without becoming unnecessarily philosophical and vague. Here are the four understandings of the word "meaning": 
1. "Meaning" sometimes means definition. A dictionary gives the meaning of words. In terms of the personal quest for meaning then, it is a question of identity, personal definition: not just "How is life defined?" But "How is my life defined?" "Who am I?" Victor Hugo spoke for many of us when he said, "I feel two natures struggle within me." (Recall our earlier reference to "being beside ourselves".) 
2. Meaning sometimes means a sense of wholeness. A search for meaning is a search for a sense that things are related to each other, fit with each other and make sense. 
3. Meaning also has to do with purpose; what is the intention of something? In personal terms the question becomes, "What am I meant to do in this life?"
4. Finally, meaning has to do with the object of my responsibility. To whom am I ultimately responsible and for what? 
To search for the meaning of one's life requires addressing all four of these questions and they're not completely separable from one another. But let's start with the first one–– meaning as a matter of definition. To discover the meaning of a word we look in a dictionary. To discover the meaning of life in general or ours in particular we must look elsewhere. 
(1) Meaning as "definition." We're really talking about personal identity. A few decades ago the psychologist Erik Erikson wrote a lot about what we saw as an "identity crisis," people unsure of who they really were. Not only is this especially important in the adolescent years, but in mid-life as well when some people suffer what is called a "midlife crisis." 
e. e. cummings said, 
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting." 
So in this dimension of the meaning-search it's easy to be thrown off by accepting other people's definition of ourselves, or settling for defining ourselves in terms of the occupation we have or how we make our money. 
At the heart of the current feminist movement is a rejection of how women tend to be thought of in our society. Women have been rebelling against limited definitions of themselves as wives and mothers, holders of less demanding, less physical or less authoritative jobs. 
As a man said, when they took his wife off to the mental hospital, "I can't understand what got into her. She hasn't been out of the kitchen for thirty years." You don't have to be female or young, or for that matter elderly, to challenge limited definitions of who you are. 
Your personal definition is an ongoing question because we can continue throughout our lives making discoveries about who we are. There is no more important question, no more important aspect of the "meaning question" than this question of personal identity, personal definition. 
Some questions worth your asking might be: 
  • "What do you think are some of the definitions other people have of you?" 
  • "With which of those do you agree or disagree?"
  • "How would you define yourself as of today?"

Next:  -MEANING AS A SENSE OF WHOLENESS

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