Scientific American: A Happy Life May not be a Meaningful Life
Tasks that seem mundane, or even difficult, can bring a sense of meaning over time.
Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl once wrote, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” For most people, feeling happy and finding life meaningful are both important and related goals. But do happiness and meaning always go together? It seems unlikely, given that many of the things that we regularly choose to do – from running marathons to raising children – are unlikely to increase our day-to-day happiness. Recent research suggests that while happiness and a sense of meaning often overlap, they also diverge in important and surprising ways. ...
... Interestingly, their findings suggest that money, contrary to popular sayings, can indeed buy happiness. Having enough money to buy what one needs in life, as well as what one desires, were also positively correlated with greater levels of happiness. However, having enough money seemed to make little difference in life’s sense of meaning. This same disconnect was recently found in a multi-national study conducted by Shigehiro Oishi and Ed Diener, who show that people from wealthy countries tend to be happier, however, they don’t see their lives as more meaningful. In fact, Oishi and Diener found that people from poorer countries tend to see their lives as more meaningful. ...
... Participants in the study who were more likely to agree with the statement, “I am a giver,” reported less happiness than people who were more likely to agree with, “I am a taker.” However, the “givers” reported higher levels of meaning in their lives compared to the “takers.” In addition, spending more time with friends was related to greater happiness but not more meaning. ...
... It is clear that a highly meaningful life may not always include a great deal of day-to-day happiness. And, the study suggests, our American obsession with happiness may be intimately related to a feeling of emptiness, or a life that lacks meaning.
Fascinating article. It made me think of two guys talking about a friend who had bought a $1,000 tie. The first guy says, "Buying that tie won't be him happiness." The second guy says, "Sure it will ... for about 24 hours."
It strikes me that happiness is more fleeting and driven by immediate circumstances while meaning has greater resilience, not easily influenced by the immediate circumstances of any given moment. I also expect, as hinted at the end of the article, that what many of us are genuinely persuing is meaning but mistaking happiness for meaning. I wonder if there is a role for the church in all of this? ;-)
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