Paul, 1997, p. xii). This understanding of meaning still has inherent difficulties. One group of people may decide that promoting a particular set of beliefs is a worthwhile moral and creative action, while another may object on different moral grounds which they hold to be significant. Although a society or a group agrees on criteria for meaning, it does not follow that their opinion represents the true reality of the phenomenon. For many years it was supposed that the earth was the centre of the universe, that it was flat, and that the sun revolved around it. Everyone at the time thought that this was objective truth. Now it is understood, on the basis of irrefutable evidence, that the earth’s position in the universe is very different. It is dawning on the earthlings that the importance of the earth is only to the people living on it. The wider significance of the planet and the life on it may be very small given the infinity of space. Thus, history is full of surprises which have changed common understandings of reality.
This issue of objective versus subjective definition of meaning takes us back to the argument about the role of finiteness versus infinity in meaning-making. For example, you want to know that your computer works and is reliable. However, you may not understand very much about how it works and probably never will. All you need to know is how to use the computer. But there are many computers on the market with similar characteristics. One of the subjective judgments (subjective because you accept the information given to you by the technical experts on faith) you have to make is to buy a particular model based on the apparently objective criteria (such as memory size, processing speed, type of interphase, number of apps, available technological assistance, etc.) presented to you by the supplier. You do not buy the computer purely on the basis of explicit objective criteria that you fully understand such as colour (although such criteria may be part of the equation in your decision-making). You don’t really understand much of the information the tech gives you about the computer, except that it sounds pretty good and the tech sounds and looks competent to you. You do not actually test much of the computer capabilities yourself before you buy it, but rather you buy it on the basis of a subjective judgment of the extent to which you can trust the information given to you by the techs.
According to Adams (1979), this is the same kind of judgment on which understanding of the Universe and everything in it is based. The idea that forty two may be the answer to the question ‘what is the meaning of life’ may be as good as any other, and viewed in this sense, the difference between subject and object is illusory: people are often persuaded that many things are objective. Indeed, many things may actually be objective to the best of the knowledge of the people developing the information about them, but that information is still understood, disseminated and used by individuals based on choices which are based on subjective judgment. Subjective choices are for example governing how this book is being written. We have been persuaded to write it in order to deal with professional and scientific questions which may be objective. However, our interest and motivation is subjective, just as the reader is perhaps motivated by subjective reasons to read this textbook.
Many scholars take the middle ground, and we (speaking of ourselves subjectively) tend to agree with this position. They see the judgement of meaningful actions as having both objective and subjective components. An action may be reckoned to be meaningful in the consensus of wider society, but some individuals may not recognize it as meaningful to them. There may often be common assumptions about shared interests from which some people are excluded. For example, in many Western societies it is assumed that most people can read, but there are people who experience difficulties with reading, and therefore cannot share in the enjoyment of books or magazines and the meanings these activities may have for people in general. Books and magazines and the activity of reading may have no meaning for these people, despite the rich meaning they have for others.
Nihilists and Taoists dispute the idea that life has any meaning at all (Nagel, 1986) other than as a flicker in the temporal scale of the universe, and therefore is virtually un-important. For them, pre-occupation with the search for meaning is a reflection of human arrogance, a lack of perspective, and is utterly futile. Instead, Taoists might argue, everything is a part of the void, it is both something and nothing, and rather than searching for meaning, we should accept experience as it is for the pleasure of experience.
A working definition of meaningfulness
There are some apparently contradictory perspectives in this discussion. A Taoist view of meaning contains meaninglessness, not as indifference to reality, but as acceptance of it. A Western perspective might generally be that: ‘A meaningful life…is a life of active engagement in projects of worth, which might involve such things as moral or intellectual accomplishments, relationships with family and friends, or artistic/creative enterprises’ (Paul et al., 1997, p. xii). Meaning can also be defined as an experience of coherence, as well as a sense of creativity and control over the span of one’s life (Carlson, Clark, & Young, 1998). Dwyer, Nordenfelt, and Ternestedt (2008, p. 98) offer a particularly relevant definition of the construct thus: ‘Meaning is understood here in general sense of one’s self and one’s life having a value, within a focus on everyday life.’ Human society is based on co-operation and participation, which suggests a perception of and need for shared values. The core theme of this book is that individuals need to live meaningfully through what they do in the pursuit of daily occupations, and suggests a common sense approach to a working definition of meaningfulness, based in tacit knowledge and derived from experience.
As De Certeau (1988) found in his exploration of the practice of everyday life, things which are close at hand are meaningful because they are immediately useful. The way in which people associate with others in the community in which they live is through a common knowledge of where to get a decent cut of meat, or a meeting at their preferred café which they get to through a short cut through the streets which they know of, and at which they might discuss how to get a new job, or where they can have their car fixed. These are examples of how people get by in work or life in general. The commonsense understanding of meaningfulness lies in this sense of connectedness with other people and with one’s context, and is realized through a mosaic of the mundane.
The paradox of the objective/subjective definition of meaning is apparent in the key skill of establishing rapport with clients in the client centered approach to therapy. The therapist has to listen carefully to the client. Even where the client has difficulty in engaging, the therapist has to provide an opportunity for him/her to communicate (du Toit, 2009). Despite the expertise of the therapist, the will to act rests with the client. The client’s lived experience qualifies him/her to challenge the therapist’s knowledge, however objective that knowledge might be in the perspective of the therapist (Sinclair, 2007). To appreciate and come to terms with the kind of knowledge such lived experience may reveal, therapists may have to prepare, just as they would when they study in order to expand their clinical and theoretical knowledge, by developing their awareness of and accepting other perspectives of meaningfulness. This entails being aware of the subjectivities which have been absorbed through the process of becoming a therapist, or the culture and society in which one grew up. These subjective contexts provide individuals with ideological definitions of meaning that exclude recognition of the experiences of other people. For example, even in occupational therapy education, Beagan (2007) found that working class occupational therapy students tended not to discuss personal experiences in class because the dominant middle class milieu of the university made them feel insignificant. They thought that what they said would simply not be heard, an indication that they were made to feel that their lives were not as meaningful as those of their more privileged classmates.
As healthcare workers, occupational therapists often deal with problems that arise from social and economic disparities and their consequences on health. The knowledge that professionals use is often learned as a set of technical interventions. These are often presented as specialized forms of knowledge, applied in clinical settings; whereas the conditions being treated are experienced quite differently by the people who are being treated (Frank, 1995; Mattingly, 1998). The experiences of anxiety, discomfort, pain, disability, the disruption of life narratives, and the social narratives which clients have,
