I love this article. It ascertains what I've been trying to confirm with myself for months. Living as an individual, and observing your own impulses and needs, banishes you from the higher form of existence - the state of mind which ought to lead to productivity and purpose. It's by devoting yourself to other causes, separate from your own, and by giving yourself away in a manner that grants your life meaning, that you become settled into a security of direction, which, if anything, is the surest way to happiness. I've long thought that individualism was the worst guide to living. I think this man's ideas and experience prove me correct.
Giving as opposed to taking certainly helps with happiness. I think that people shouldn't necessarily try to search for the meaning in their life, or to go a step further, they should simply let life happen. Absorb the moment you are in, take it all in and don't go chasing some concept that may not even exist. Look at the animals around us, are they running around trying to figure out their lives meaning, or acting in the pursuit of happiness? They are what they are and that is that. Meaning and purpose shouldn't be something to drive yourself crazy while you search for it. Live your life, help others when you can, and those things will find you sooner or later.
Self-actualization, in my opinion, is distinct from happiness. Happiness is a mood, while self-actualization is a state of being that cannot exist without a conceptualization of meaning outside oneself and satisfaction with the level of success one has enjoyed in interacting with that meaning. Happiness is something I've learned, in almost any situation, to simply "do," like brushing my teeth or tying my shoes. If I need to be happy for some reason, there are very few things that can prevent me from simply using body language, facial expressions, word choice, and other cues to produce the mood of happiness. (Of course, a massive personal tragedy can get in the way, but most anything else is not a roadblock.) Self-actualization can't be synthesized or temporarily forced. The things I find most self-actualizing are not the things that necessarily produce the mood of happiness. To look on a completed piece of work and recall with pleasure the misery of producing it is self-actualizing. To walk away from it incomplete and have an ice cream sundae instead might produce happiness, but would never produce self-actualization. There is a level of exquisite satisfaction with the human experience in exhaustion, overwork, overgenerosity, and sometimes even failure.
Is meaning equal to purpose? This article, and Viktor Frankl almost use the two terms interchangeably. For me at least, there is a huge different between having meaning and having purpose. Purpose is something you need to do, something achievable. Meaning is something entirely different - something you know is important to you and requires attention. These terms being used as basically the same says something about his outlook. He almost sees meaning as something you need to achieve. I'm not sure if I could get on board with that. Otherwise, I completely agree with the man. He has a lot of wisdom from life experiences, and I admire him in that respect. I certainly agree happiness is not all there is to find. Just thought I'd point out that he has an interesting opinion on what meaning is."Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need," the researchers write.
I'd argue that meaning that transcend the self, but also be part of yourself. Meaning that basically, even if no other human being in the world existed, you could still find meaning within yourself.