Step Zero: Toward Human Flourishing

Step Zero: Toward Human Flourishing
Meaning of Life

What if, while reading the lines below, you granted me a temporary suspension of judgment, so that I might demonstrate that the “meaning of life,” contrary to what prevailing opinion tends to suppose, is in fact one of the most evident things there is?

1 — ANALYZING A HUMAN LIFE AS AN OBJECT

In order to discover the meaning of our own life, we must first learn to analyze a human life as an object of knowledge.

A human life, however, can only be examined in its entirety when contemplated from birth to death. Only then does it become possible to observe its resultant: what that existence effectively became once the whole of its trajectory had been completed.

As long as the individual remains alive, his story remains open. A new action may still confirm, modify, contradict, or even redeem everything he has previously done. For this reason, at this first stage, our own life cannot be regarded as a completed totality.

We must therefore begin with the life of a third person who has already died, whose existence can be contemplated from the perspective of a concluded trajectory.

This is precisely what Stéphane Mallarmé expresses in his celebrated line from the poem dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe:

“Such as into himself at last eternity transforms him.”

Eternity transforms man into what he truly came to be: the crystallized, complete, and immutable form of an existence.

It is for this reason that the Greeks maintained that a man can only truly be judged after his death. While he lives, we do not yet know the whole. And happiness, like meaning, can only be fully judged in light of this completeness: of what life, considered in its totality, effectively resulted in.

2 — THE IMPORTANCE OF NARRATIVES

If a human life can only be objectively analyzed after it has been completed, then we can only know it in its entirety through a narrative—that is, through a story.

We cannot directly experience an existence lasting one hundred and twenty years, from birth to death. We can, however, know it when someone tells us that entire life. It is narratively that we acquire knowledge of complete human lives.

Consequently, in order to discover which lives possess meaning, we must ask which stories we consider meaningful, which ones we wish to hear, and which ones we recognize as evident examples of a life well lived.

Although there are countless individual stories, there are only a few fundamental models of existence that human beings repeatedly tell one another across different ages, peoples, and cultures.

One of these models is the story of the hero: the person who liberates, saves, or protects others from suffering through sacrifice, effort, courage, honor, virtue, or talent.

The hero’s life possesses meaning because it brought more into the world than it took from it. Even if the hero himself, on his deathbed, doubts the value of his existence, those who were saved or benefited by his actions can objectively recognize the meaning of his life.

Another model is the story of the sage: the person who dedicates his existence to acquiring wisdom, seeking truth, and understanding reality.

The sage liberates others from the darkness of ignorance. He offers his understanding to those around him, elevates their spirits, and illuminates the world through his vision. The sage himself may not be entirely satisfied with what he accomplished, but his life had meaning for all those who learned from him.

There is also a third class of stories: the stories of artists and entrepreneurs, that is, of those who enrich or beautify the world.

Artists create beauty, forms, symbols, music, poetry, and works that elevate human experience. Entrepreneurs create wealth, prosperity, instruments, institutions, and goods that did not previously exist, thereby expanding the material possibilities of life.

These narratives do not interest us by accident. We preserve, recount, and admire them because we recognize in them existences objectively endowed with meaning. They are lives that seem worthy not only of being lived, but also of being known and narrated.

3 — FINDING MEANING 

The search for the meaning of life then becomes relatively simple. One need only formulate the following question:

- Among all the life stories I know, which one appears to me to be truly endowed with meaning? 

- Which story presents, to me, the narrative of a full life worthy of being lived?

Fundamentally, the models of meaningful life can be gathered into three broad categories: the life of the hero, the life of the sage, and the life of the artist or creator.

The hero saves the world or liberates other human beings from their suffering.

The sage understands the world and illuminates it through his intelligence.

The artist or creator enriches the world, materially or aesthetically, adding goods, prosperity, or beauty to it.

If we examine the narrative works produced by humanity—films, books, plays, songs, poems, and biographies—we will notice that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they tell the stories of protagonists belonging to one of these three categories.

There is also another kind of life that arouses human interest: the life of monsters, those who produce suffering through cruelty, injustice, and evil action.

The stories of monsters, however, interest us by contrast. They present us with evident examples of a life devoid of meaning: an existence that took far more from the world than it gave to it.

It is important here to distinguish between two things: a person may feel that his life possesses meaning and nevertheless be profoundly mistaken. Great criminals, tyrants, and monsters may also subjectively believe in the importance of what they do.

Feeling that life possesses meaning is one thing; objectively possessing a meaningful life is another.

Objective meaning cannot be founded solely upon the individual’s inner conviction. It must manifest itself in the concrete resultant of his existence: in the suffering he diminished, the truth he revealed, the wisdom he transmitted, the beauty he created, or the prosperity he added to the world.

The life of someone who merely survives, pays his bills, mechanically fulfills his obligations, raises his children, and dies hardly constitutes, in itself, a life fully endowed with meaning.

I am not claiming that working, supporting oneself, or caring for one’s family is bad. On the contrary, these are necessary, good, and, in many cases, indispensable duties. Yet these activities belong primarily to the maintenance of life and of the species; they are things we share with many animals and are not properly human in themselves. They do not exhaust the properly human possibilities of existence.

As the Brazilian poet Alberto da Cunha Melo wrote:

“To live, merely to live—my dog does that very well.”

If a film were made about someone who simply survived, raised his children, paid his bills, and fulfilled his daily obligations, without subordinating his existence to any higher purpose, few people would wish to watch it. If a book were written about that life, hardly anyone would read it.

What we desire to hear about the lives of others reveals, to a great extent, what we recognize as worthy of being lived by ourselves.

For this reason, full meaning exists only in a life that, in some manner, participates in heroism, wisdom, or creation.

Not everyone needs to become Achilles, Aristotle, Beethoven, or R. Buckminster Fuller. Yet every life must be consciously directed toward saving, understanding, or enriching the world, even if only within a limited sphere.

One should not be pretentious, attributing to oneself a greatness one does not yet possess. One should, however, be ambitious regarding the purpose of one’s own existence.

4 — ANALYZING OUT OWN LIFE

Once the objective meaning of human life has been recognized, it becomes necessary to apply it to our own existence.

One exercise capable of assisting in this task is the composition of an obituary: a kind of memorial written as though it were to be published after our death.

This obituary should be written in the third person, as though a friend were recounting our trajectory after its conclusion. In the text, we should imagine that we have fulfilled our highest aspirations and our deepest dreams.

The account should be written in rich detail. It should describe the emotional dimensions of our relationships with those around us, our professional, intellectual, and material achievements, the recognition we received, the difficulties we overcame, the people we helped, and the transformation our existence brought about in the world.

More important than enumerating achievements, however, is revealing the form assumed by the life:

- What suffering did this person diminish?

- Whom did this person protect or save?

- What truths did this person understand and transmit?

- What goods, wealth, or institutions did this person create?

- What beauty did this person add to the world?

- What did this person’s life bring into existence that would not be here without it?

If composed with honesty, discernment, and depth, this document may become a map capable of guiding us throughout life, leading us toward our highest achievements and toward the realization of our full meaning.

It will be like the central point of a wheel: the center remains still even while all its spokes and its entire circumference move incessantly.

In the same way, although circumstances, desires, suffering, opportunities, and the events of life are in constant transformation, the vision of what we wish to have become by the end of our existence may remain as a fixed principle, capable of giving unity and direction to all our actions.

An entire life, however, is a long and abstract reality. We do not know when it will end or how much time we will have to accomplish what we desire. We know only that our life is made up of a succession of days.

For this reason, each day may be understood as a kind of symbolic representation of life as a whole: a small life of consciousness that begins when we awaken and ends when we fall asleep.

If we wish to have the life of a sage, we must perform at least one action each day that brings us closer to wisdom.

If we wish to have the life of a hero, we must perform actions that bring us closer to service, sacrifice, and the liberation of others from suffering.

If we wish to enrich or beautify the world, we must create something each day, however small, that did not exist before.

At the end of each day, we should ask:

Today, did I move closer to or farther away from the story I want my life to tell?

The obituary presents the desired final form; the daily examination determines whether our concrete actions are actually leading us toward it.

In this way, the meaning of life ceases to be a distant abstraction and becomes a principle of action.

Perhaps, then, the meaning of life is not a hidden mystery reserved for philosophers or exceptional sages. Perhaps it is one of the most evident things there is, because all of us already know how to recognize a heroic life, a wise life, or a creative life when we see it narrated before us.

The true difficulty does not lie in discovering which lives possess meaning.

It lies in acquiring the courage, discipline, and constancy necessary to transform our own life into one of them.

Luiz Gustavo Vicente