How to return your meaning of life?
The loss of the meaning of life often accompanies crises and turning points in which a person's key life project collapses. It could be the loss of a job, a divorce, the loss of a loved one, or a sudden change in perspective. All these events are united by the fact that they break the usual rhythm of human life.
For a long period, a person thought that he had something to live for, aspired to a certain goal, was motivated by it, and suddenly he realizes that he no longer has this goal. This kind of breakdown can occur not only as a result of negative, but also as a result of positive events, for example, when the goal set by a person has already been achieved, and he does not know what to strive for and how to live on.
As a rule, the loss of the meaning of life is associated with the fact that a person does not understand who he is and what he would like. And all those activities and interests that fascinated him before suddenly become gray and meaningless, because he does not understand why he should do something and strive for something. Without meaning, joy is also impossible; therefore, with the loss of the meaning of life, a person often plunges into depression and cuts off contacts.
How to return the lost meaning of life?
First, it is important to understand that purpose is inseparable from engagement. The more in the experience of meaninglessness a person moves away from other people and life, the further the meaning becomes from him, since the meaning is generated in live contacts and active deeds, where a person can feel himself and somehow relate to himself, others and what is happening.
Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to regain a sense of involvement in life, and this should be done using the methods that are best suited to a particular person. Someone is best revived by sports; someone else needs new acquaintances, others "wakes up" on trips and travels. It is important to choose the type of activity that could shake up a person in crisis, make him keenly feel contact with himself and with life.
Secondly, both the process of loss and the process of gaining meaning often occur simultaneously and spontaneously, so it is hardly worth setting yourself the task of finding meaning in the next week, month, or even year.
Meaning is acquired not so much consciously as irrationally, when suddenly what a person does meets with some future perspective that he sees in it. But this perspective cannot be gained if nothing is done. For it to appear, you must already go a certain way and be involved.
And the life meaning usually appears suddenly, like a flash of insight. Therefore, meaning cannot be turned into a goal or a goal can be made meaning, because meaning is something more than just a goal. Meaning encompasses not only the cognitive and emotional, but also the spiritual layer of human life. This means that meaning does not obey algorithms, and its appearance requires patience. Attempts to mechanize meaning or to find it at all costs when it is not there, on the contrary, lead to the fact that it escapes.
Thirdly, the very suspended position between the old and the new meaning of living is by no means meaningless, it is a very valuable experience. Usually such a state is extremely painful and uncomfortable for a person, since it is a situation of uncertainty. But from this situation, too, you can extract something useful for yourself if you learn to withstand uncertainty.
Yes, now the old meaning is lost, there is no new one, and it is not known when the reason for living will appear again, but then the time has come for productive emptiness and experiments. While a new meaning has not yet appeared, a person is free to do whatever he likes with himself and with his life - try something that he has not tried yet, start something new and give it up if it does not respond to him. Ready-made meaning limits a person in many ways, because with it he already knows what he lives for.
Unknowing, on the contrary, opens up the widest possible perspective, which means that it is this period of uncertainty that can become the starting point for cardinal changes in life. And the most absurd experiments sometimes become decisive turning points for choosing a future path.
Fourth, before finding a new raison d’etre, you need to say goodbye to the old one. And for this it is important, on the one hand, to mourn its loss, because the old meaning served a person for some time, motivated him, accompanied him on his life path, in connection with which it can be very sad to part with this segment of life, leave it in the past.
On the other hand, the loss of the old meaning is not only a sad, but also a joyful event, since it allows something new to be born. If the former meaning was lost, there was probably something in it that either had already come true, or that was not destined to come true. And thanks to the loss of the former life meaning, a person realizes that he is much wider and more than this lost meaning.
The lost meaning of life does not exhaust the person’s entire life, his entire existence is not reduced to it. In different periods of life, meanings can change, which means there will be room for a new life purposes. Therefore, sometimes the loss of the old meaning can even be celebrated.
For example, in those cases when a person set himself a certain goal, but eventually became disappointed in it, because it was better to achieve and understand from one's own experience that something did not suit him than to leave this experience unlived.
Experiencing the loss of the meaning of life, you can also try to find support in people who have faced similar experiences, pay attention to how they overcame a similar crisis, what helped them, what resonates from this, what does not. Situations that lead to the loss of the meaning of life may be different for different people, but often they reveal common roots and mechanisms, when the former meaning was overestimated, and the new one is sometimes in the most unexpected area, at the moment of good contact of a person with himself and the world around.
