Meaning and Purpose: Quantified and Customized!
Jackie felt a lack of meaning and purpose as a deep sucking feeling in her stomach. It was a constant drain on her, a deep hole in her center that she just did not know how to fill. She went through the motions of life – going to work, doing house chores, browsing the internet, hanging out with friends – but didn’t feel there was any point to it all. She felt stuck and trapped, going through a meaningless and fake existence, with no way out to a better world. Oh, Jackie certainly sought to gain a sense of meaning and purpose, many times. Her family, friends, and church members kept trying to convince her that faith in and service to god was the ultimate purpose of life. And she wanted to believe, she really did! But even as a child, Jackie felt something missing in that perspective, and started to feel that unease in her stomach. She grew more and more disillusioned in her teenage years, and the unease grew into a deep pit. She just didn’t feel that serving god was really meaningful for her, it just didn’t ring true – finding the truth was really important to her, more important than faith. The efforts of her family and church members to convince her only pushed her further away from them. Nobody was happy. Then she learned about the idea that you can find a rich sense of life purpose using a sciencebased approach. She even learned that studies showed those with a deep sense of life meaning have much better physical and mental health! She was very surprised to learn that there are paths other than religion or tradition to having a meaningful life.