Why Meaning Matters and How You Can Create It
I’m Not Burnt Out
On a vacation to Europe, I started reading a book on burnout (because I am very cool and chill). For so long, I had resisted the idea that I am “burnt out” because I was good at work-life balance, I prioritized rest, I had pursuits that brought me joy.
But I’d also felt myself slipping. I felt foggy and couldn’t concentrate. Sometimes, the smallest tasks felt impossible. I googled things like “ADHD in women” and “phone addiction mimicking attention disorders.” I cried at my desk. I pulled myself together. I told myself it was ok to just work a job for the money. I forced myself to write another email about something that would be forgotten in a month. I closed my laptop and stood in the sun. I thought about the sea. Pictured myself throwing my phone as hard as I could into the waves. I read another article where people congratulated themselves for creating things that I was pretty sure were killing all of us. And I told myself that wasn’t burnout. You aren’t burnt out.
But as the plane took off and I cracked the spine of the book that made me I start crying before I’d finished reading the introduction, I began to wonder if I was deluding myself.
People Need Meaning
The most important lesson I took away from the book is that meaning is an antidote to burnout. The good (and scary) news, is that we can create meaning for ourselves by engaging with our communities and connecting to something bigger than ourselves.
I closed the book after I read that section on meaning. I knew that it was true (I was longing for meaning), and I knew that it would take hard work to create that meaning in my life (an excruciating task when you already feel burnout). I had a hunch though that the work of building meaning wouldn’t drain me the way other kinds of work had: the bottomless pit, dead-eyed-trance kind of work that I was all too familiar with.
When I got home from that vacation, I set about creating that meaning for myself.
I want more (and so should you)
Over the last two years, I have leaned into my creativity (through my writing and my teaching), and it has not only made me happy, it has also made me hopeful.
When I asked myself what I needed to do to create more meaning in my life, I could feel the magnetic pull from the direction of my art. For me, creation is storytelling, and stories are what help me find and make meaning in my life. Meaning that carries me through moments of doubt, fear, and burnout. I know that creating, urgently and unapologetically, is the answer because every time I look at the pictures I took on that trip, I remember the thrill I felt at learning to use my camera, at honing my eye for photography.
There is the ethereal photo of the most exquisite beach I have ever laid eyes on, the water a rippling, cyan blue. I remember how ice cold it was when we jumped in, how alive we felt when we broke back through the surface into the sun.
I want to feel like that every day.
I sometimes resent my insatiable demand for a life that is rich, and meaningful, and has a purpose that feels bigger than me.
Why can’t I be happy with less? But I can’t.
I want more! I always have!
And you should too.
Are you ready to find more meaning in your life? Feel like tapping into your creativity could be the answer?
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