rarely ever won, but Grampy didn't care about that. Some coaches bought their kids ice cream only after a victory. My grandfather did it whenever he could afford to, because he didn't think their fun should hinge on how skillfully they played the game. My grandmother still runs into Grampy's former players who to this day appreciate his kindness, thoughtfulness, and generosity.
When Grampy was fifty-five, he lost both of his legs to a staph infection he contracted while in the hospital for bypass surgery. He could easily have gotten bitter about the unfairness of it all, but I don't remember him ever stewing in anger or self-pity—not even after the infection spread from the first to the second leg. He'd already retired at that point and because his legs were now amputated above the knees, he became permanently confined to a wheelchair. Still, he sat center stage at every community theater rehearsal and even helped my group get on the local news by pitching our play to the entertainment reporter. Our director nominated Grampy for the Channel 56 Independent Spirit award, which honors people who have done outstanding work for their communities.
As Grampy sat at the award ceremony, both tiny and massive in his chair, cradling that award, I suspected that what really mattered to him was that he'd lived a life he was proud of. That's what I remember when my efforts seem small—that the biggest reward is sitting peacefully in the knowledge that I'm being the person I want to be. We do humanity a disservice if we believe we all, universally, need to meet some preconceived expectation of big in order to be living meaningful lives. What really fulfills us is a sense that we're using our time in a way that aligns with our own instincts and values—that we're making the difference we want to make in the way we want to make it.
We can live our lives struggling to change the world—we can try to do important things before anyone else or hard things better than everyone else. That's one way to go about it, and it's a perfectly valid approach. We get to choose what's meaningful and impactful and how we go about accomplishing it. There aren't any right or wrong answers as long as we choose the answers for ourselves, based on what we actually believe matters. At the end of it all, what flashes before our eyes won't be all the things we did that were bigger than ourselves; they'll be all the moments when we made a difference by being true to ourselves.
MAKE THE DIFFERENCE YOU WANT TO MAKE TODAY.
If you're not sure you're making a difference in the world:
Identify what makes you feel proud of yourself. Or, put another way: what would you feel good about giving back to the world? This doesn't need to be an all-encompassing purpose that carries you through the rest of your life. Think in terms of what feels right in this moment. If you were to die tomorrow, what would you want people to remember of you? For example, if tomorrow were my last day, I'd want people to remember me as someone who helped people hurt less and enjoy more.
Recognize the percentage of time you spend striving for meaning. If your day is a pie chart, what percentage do you devote to striving, plotting, planning, and struggling toward a point in the future when you feel you'll be able to live your purpose? How much time, exactly, do you spend postponing meaning until some point in the future when you become more successful or impactful?
Choose to balance the equation. Today is all you're guaranteed, which means today is not just one stone along the path to making a big difference someday; it's also the opportunity to make small differences right now. You do that by making tiny choices that align with the lofty goal. You might not be a published self-help writer yet, but you can assist one person today by listening. You may not have made your documentary on families yet, but you can get your own family together tonight and embody the values you want to explore on film. Whatever you want to do on a big scale, shrink it and do it right now. You may not yet have the impact you think you need, but there's a lot you can do within your sphere of influence that still makes a difference.
LOVE IS THE MEANING OF LIFE
The meaning of life is making connections with other people. Think about it: things are always best when shared. ∼@krillhei
Kindness is the meaning of life. It says I want you to be happy. There are no hidden motives. ∼@Scilixx
Simply put, the meaning of life is to live. Life is found in our everyday interactions, kindness, and love for others. ∼@JoshMPlant
The meaning of life is to create and love all life. ∼@Jon_Maynell
The meaning of life is to radiate and reflect back the selfless love and compassion that emanates from a loved one to the entire world around you. ∼@smokyogi
If pop culture has taught us anything, it's that all we need is love, but we aren't quite sure what it is. When I was younger, I thought love was literally magic. I imagined it as a luminescence, something that could embrace two people in some type of protective, light-drenched cocoon. At five years old, this made perfect sense to me—that when two people love each other, their hearts synchronize and transform together into something bigger and infinitely more powerful than anything else that has ever or could ever exist.
I believed fully in that magic and, unlike my supposedly undying devotion to the ideas of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, that ideal never fully faded as I grew older. Even after I learned that some adults divorce and get nasty with each other, or stay married and berate each other, and long after I understood that some people create new people without even liking each other, I still believed transformative, all-encompassing love was the closest thing to real magic that we can ever know in this lifetime. I thought love would one day crack open my world, shake out everything that hurt, and heal it all under the light of unconditional acceptance and affection.
I didn't realize it back then, but I was fantasizing about an escape from the pain of being me—and the nearest exit I could imagine was someone, anyone, else. But a lot of the people I clung to were anything but loving toward me. It's easy to confuse attachment with love, particularly when we consider that we come into this world and leave it alone—that we are part of the whole but still apart. So, is it possible to ascertain the love that is the meaning of life? Can an obscure, moving, and eventually disintegrating target really be the point of it all?
In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl explored his three years at Dachau, Auschwitz, and other concentration camps. Surrounded by death and depravity, with every reason to grow bitter, resentful, and resigned, Frankl decided that people can endure anything if they have a compelling reason to do so. One of his driving motivations was to see his imprisoned pregnant wife again. He'd think about her smile, her presence, and the reunion they'd have when they could finally be together again. His love for her helped him endure dehumanization, disillusionment, and immense suffering. Frankl lived in a constant state of torturous uncertainty—about when his number might be called and about whether his wife's already had been—but his longing gave him a purpose—to push through for her, and their life together.
Based on this understanding, you might assume that he lost the will to live when he finally walked out a free man and learned his wife and most of the rest of his family had been killed. If his love for them kept him going, their being gone should have meant he stopped. Instead, he knew the power of love to continually provide meaning, even after a loved one has passed.
Frankl recounts a conversation he had with another man who lost his wife. Having cherished her as the most important thing in his world, the widower felt crippled and severely depressed in her absence. Frankl asked what might have happened if he had died first, leaving her to mourn his loss. When the widower realized the turn of events saved her the agony of grieving over him, he appeared to adopt a whole new perspective
