Not Going Against the Grain (Of Your Own Soul) LOH #200

Or, as that oft quoted Shakespearian speech put it,

To thine own self, be true.

This week, the Ladies of Hive community asked its members how they defined a meaningful life. What is meaning? I'm writing this before my philosophy class, so I'm trying not to wander off, and focus solely on what a meaningful existence looks like to me.

When asked what a meaningful life might mean, people often point to career, love, health, financial stability. God. Much as it goes against my personal beliefs, I'm inclined to say the latter is closest to the mark. Money, love, health even, these are preferences. A sick person has their life made harder by their illness, though no less meaningful. Love, also, moves towards my understanding of meaning, though given the many embodiments of love, this one's trickier to pinpoint.

I think a life without love of any kind is just about the most meaningless there can be. Though often, we're more specific. We mean a partner or children. I'm sure there are people who find meaningful existence without those things, provided they have other types of love in their life. Which brings me to my understanding of meaningfulness.

For me, a meaningful life is one where you are connected to something larger than and outside of your self. In equal measure, of course, you need to first find and connect to your self.

What do I want from my life? I want to write. I hope to make a career of it, though to be fair,those are again preferences. Wants, not musts, ones that do not weigh on the meaningfulness of my life. I don't expect literary notoriety to get me meaning.

I think you find meaning when there is love in your life. When you build something, or at least help make something (an endeavor, a place, a life) more beautiful. When you help something grow. Be it a tree, a small child, your best friend, your lover. I think that's where meaning rides, in between you and the world you're interacting with. When you close yourself off from the world, I think you also close yourself up from meaning. I think it's wrong to expect meaningfulness in life to be a one-man, from-within job.

So I think your life is made meaningful when you help, when you grow, when you love.

But how does that relate to going against the grain? I heard something interesting the other day in a podcast between Jordan Peterson and Mary Harrington, one of my favorite journalists (and one of the few modern feminists I can actually respect). She said something like,

A woman's life follows its own hero's journey, dictated by the ancient archetype of three. The maiden, the mother and the crone.

The idea was that when you're young, you have this time to define yourself, to maybe make something of a career, create, all that. But then, there comes a time (or there should) when you evolve into your next phase, that of mother. And later on, once your children are grown comes a new path to wisdom, a sense of giving back as Harrington described it. My mom, when I told her this, said Carl Jung also thought it was everyone's duty in the second half of their life to quest for wisdom in such way.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking when I said don't go against the grain of your own life. So much of our modern world is given to denial of nature, we oppress the natural female desire for motherhood and shame women for wanting that. We develop potions and elixirs to inject that deny the aging of our own bodies. That's going against the grain, in my opinion.

As long as you're opposing a vital part of your life, of where it's at now, I don't think you can live a truly meaningful life because you're conflicted. More than that, this sort of denial is turning you inward, when true meaning lies outward.

In other words, if you're pouring all your energy into you, what you should look like, what you're proving to whoever by doing this or that, there's little time for building something more meaningful with someone else, be it a partner or your community.

I think the more you feel a sense of belonging in your day-to-day, the more meaningful your life becomes.

Maybe I'm wrong.