What is "MEANING" - what is "MEANINGFUL" ?

what is it?
i say it all the time; to have goals that are personally MEANINGFUL
or the idea of a life with MEANING

but what is that really?
is it just something i enjoy?
does it involve other people?

what does it mean for a life to HAVE MEANING?

to be clear, im not asking for someone to give me the perfect answer for my life - obviously jo one can do that for anyone other than themself

im asking; how do YOU understand or explain the idea of MEANINGFUL?
what does it mean to YOU?

~ I like your question, quite a good question actually.. Oh, sorry that what a my meaning :evil: ~

Meaning is the a personal understanding of the world around you. Your own way of telling the the link between things. A way of creating an expression of words or emotions that shows how the link between different things affects you.

May the force guide you towards more beautiful questions ,

-Aqua

The answer might be that it is a question not an answer!? :blink:

Meaning (!) that if for something to be meaningful your asking what its most accurate meaning is and to settle on 'a' meaning then perhaps means (!!) that you have decided on using a specific understanding at that point in time.

Then the process can switch between engaging or not engaging in that pursuit with both having different sensations/experiences. Since we seem to learn better by exploring, perhaps exerting some type of empathy as a way to interpret our environs reflects back onto us by slowly changing how we see the world - though in functional terms sometimes focus needs to be more directed and approximations have to be made to shape/control and complete some process. I like to try and keep things loose though and strip away pre-established understanding of things when not needed to stop exerting expectations outwards and reinforcing habits inwards.

I feel a life with meaning is a life that one intentionally infuses with purpose.

im asking; how do YOU understand or explain the idea of MEANINGFUL?
what does it mean to YOU?

Very good question. I like it. Thank you.

I think meaningfull isn't so complicated as most people make it out to be. Meaningfull is whatever is important to you.

For me, It's living as simple a life as I can in haromony with the world around me. Also I'd like the world to better place for me being here.

I want to live well and be comfortable, at least most of the time, but that doesn't mean extravagant.

I try to focus on the kinder and gentiler aspects of life but still be cognitive of the realities of life and not be foolisly optimistic.

Meaningfull is finding balance so you feel connected to life and all that is around you.

Meaningfull is being at peace with yourself.

Rickie wrote:

im asking; how do YOU understand or explain the idea of MEANINGFUL?
what does it mean to YOU?

Very good question. I like it. Thank you.

I think meaningfull isn't so complicated as most people make it out to be. Meaningfull is whatever is important to you.

For me, It's living as simple a life as I can in haromony with the world around me. Also I'd like the world to better place for me being here.

I want to live well and be comfortable, at least most of the time, but that doesn't mean extravagant.

I try to focus on the kinder and gentiler aspects of life but still be cognitive of the realities of life and not be foolisly optimistic.

Meaningfull is finding balance so you feel connected to life and all that is around you.

Meaningfull is being at peace with yourself.

That. All of that. I like it.

It's a struggle I find myself in all the time. I realize that I could have more money and stuff and be less financially worried if I picked up another job and worked 60 hours a week instead of the 40 I do now, but everytime I think about it I think of the free time I'd be giving up. I enjoy my free time so I'm not really inclined to give it up.

I think, what if I had a day where I worked from when I woke up to when I went to bed then died in my sleep, will I have enjoyed my last day? Now, not every day can be a perfect last day, but I can try to make all of mine not the worst. I feel like an entire day spent at work, even though I enjoy my job, would not be a good day to have be my last.

Yesterday I had a pretty meaningful day. I did a small amount of cleaning, watched both Captain America movies (the most patriotic movies I own for Memorial Day here in the USA), then spent the afternoon and evening grilling and spending time outside with friends. I could've died last night and, while still prefering to have lived, not felt like I wasted my last day.

That, to me, is living a meaningful life.

I came a little late to this party thread, ( ) but found this infographic and this seemed like a good place to put it!

How to live a meaningful life

http://my.happify.com/hd/how-to-live-a-meaningful-life-infographic/

Enjoy!

Every Jedi has their own Answer and all roads are right... in my belief.

I believe it truly is where you lay your worth. To one a simple cup of coffee is the world to them and the few minutes of time are rare and treated like cold... others go thru the drive thru at Mc Donalds. To each eyes a different view is seen. Meaning to me is the basic idea. If I had the opertunity... but meaningful to me is where I choose to place my heart,time,wealth,concern,blood,sweat,tears... savy? Just my own opinion

**Find where time plus and effort are and you will usually find a clear difference in meaning and meaningful every time.

As you might imagine from conversations we had previously, I am one who views meaning as something very strictly subjective by definition. That is, I think not that any thing means something. Rather, in my view it is people who may or may not mean something by things, and were it not for us, the concept of meaning in the way humans understand it would be... well... meaningless.
That is of course not to say that meaning is relative nor does that in turn mean that it is indisputable. If an artist is trying to convey a message through a piece of work, one could argue there is a true meaning of the work. On the other hand, art belongs to the recipient no less than it does the artist, and the recipient is perfectly free to speculate or even assert what he thinks is meant by any given piece of art, and while he cannot dictate to the artist what he meant by it, likewise the artist cannot dictate to the viewer what they are supposed to get out of it either.
So as shocking as this may come across - and I am admittedly not above being just that - the only way in which I would concede that life has meaning is a purely colloquial one. When we say that it does, I understand it as an expression of how much we value it or of our condition as seeking to invest our lives to a cause worthy of our time. If I was asked whether life had literally any "actual" or "real" meaning or was "really actually" meaningful, I would have to say that it doesn't and it isn't, at least not as far as we know. At best, one could say that individually some of us devote their lives to one thing or another, and one could argue that this is what they mean in or by their lives; this is at any rate a case only maintainable when no analogy to art is drawn, seeing how the only choice in being alive that we had was not make ourselves die just yet. We never chose to be born, we never intended to be, some often come back to regretting that they were born anyway and certainly none of us could have possibly meant anything by becoming alive. Yet here we are, a few decades later, pondering the meaning behind it all, often forgetting that meaning is not any property of a thing but the property of a person's relationship with it, rather.

The "search for Meaning", as it is commonly understood for some time, is one of the most dangerous undertakings in which we engage ; it leads to exclusions, suppressions and fearful discriminations rooted in the the defence of one 'meaning' from another. It is the desolation of faith by the desire for the illusion of certainty, this itself projected dimly by the flickering, feeble light of 'common' sense, 'common' knowledge, 'consensus' ...

Meaning ... What do we mean by Meaning ? Not a dictionary definition -- dictionaries only provide approximative meanings of words (7% of communication). The sort of Meaning that we're looking at here must come out of conversation, out of dialogue, out of discourse. Dictionaries are thoroughly useless for meanings (even of words) at that level.

But how does our meaning of Meaning come by way of discourse and how much of that Meaning is available through our words ? It turns out to be very little really ... As it were, Meaning is not easily encoded into a message which can be expressed, transmitted nor even truly understood outside of its relational context. Meaning is transient and it transcends - springing out of the encounter of Self and (An)Other, of Self to what cannot be objectified (Absolute Other) or even Self-to-Self (the pre-reflexive Self ; the I before set against me).

Meaning cannot therefore be directive. One cannot govern oneself - nor govern Others, nor be governed - by any accepted or imposed meaning(s) ; ethics, although primary, pre-supposing metaphysics, cannot engender Meaning for the Being. The succeeding metaphysic, upon which the government by moral is founded, happens within the framework of Being-ness tending toward Other - even Absolutely Other, which eludes the possibility of inclusion into Self-Sameness through experimentation, domination or possession, thus unknowable. Yet, it is this unknowable Other which is the source and definition of Liberty.

Meaning emerges from relationship. Since relations transpire from encounter to context, the contextualisation of the encountered (identification, familiarity, inclusion in a narrative, experience and use) objectifies the Being of the interlocutors one to the other(s), making Meaning only historic, past, dead ... As a resultant of this transcendence, there can never be any ongoing Meaning, for once it is recognised, it can only be a 'Meant', deprived of any vitality.

Ergo, the 'search for Meaning' is a vain one, as Krishnamurti pointed out. Meaning is transcendence beyond the I-It ; it is an ephemeral, emergent quality of spontaneously arising relationship between presenc-ing Beings. All we have to do - all we can do - is be open to the occurrence of it, however it manifests.