Week Ninety-Three: Reconnecting with Meaning

During times of stress and challenge, it is helpful to have ways to refocus ourselves around what has the most meaning in our lives. There are many things happening every day that we cannot change, that are beyond our personal ability to make different than they are. What we can control is how we engage what comes our way.

During a recent training weekend, a colleague quoted from the work of Lawrence LeShan – a psychologist who has explored the potential for healing that is present in all of us. Dr. LeShan’s career has included intensive work with people facing life-threatening illness. A key question Dr. LeShan would ask of these people was what gave their life meaning. For example, he asked of a gang member who was dying of cancer what it was about being in the gang that gave his life the most powerful meaning. The gang member talked about the sense of camaraderie and danger he found in belonging to a gang.

By exploring the meaning that was important to this man, Dr. LeShan helped him become a firefighter – a decision that not only allowed this man to move through his illness into health, but also allowed him to engage in a career that gave his life active and engaged meaning.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to ask yourself the same kinds of questions: What do I do in my life that has the most meaning for me? What are the qualities that give this activity meaning? What do I need to do more of that offers me a deepened sense of meaning and connection to myself and my life? As with all experiments, there are no right or wrong answers. The goal is to offer yourself an opportunity to be more in touch with what moves you.

As you connect with what gives your life meaning, take time to experience the sensations in your body that allow you to know that you are connected with what gives your life meaning. Ask yourself, “What are the sensations that allow me to recognize that I am in touch with what gives my life meaning.” Then, take some time simply to be with those sensations. There is nothing you have to do, nothing you have to “make happen.” Instead, allow your awareness to linger in sensations that connect you to what has meaning in your life and notice what happens.

Each experiment is an invitation into curiosity, without any demand that “this” or “that” emerge or unfold. As always, allow yourself to invite curiosity to be your constant companion and to be open to discoveries you didn’t expect to have.

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