Thoughts on Pursuing Meaning
A Yearly Reminder of Meaning
Today is my birthday. No bullshit, it really is. Yay for me!
Because I can do what I want today, I am going to zoom out a second and analyze some feelings and the meaning behind my birthday. Let me begin by making it clear that I don’t particularly like or dislike my birthday and throughout life have had a mixed bag of good, great, shitty, and completely forgettable “celebrations”.
That said, looking back on my life with a radically honest lens, celebrating my birthday has typically been some attention-seeking approach to getting friends together from far and wide. I remember myself caring way too much about doing some “on-paper” cool thing, in a place I believed everyone I invited would be excited to go and be. It always involved me stressing over plans, whom to invite, and whether everyone involved was actually going to have a good time.
Different year, somewhat-different attempt, same result — me giving way too many fucks about way too many things for one day. On a day that the script says I should be enjoying. I always told myself that I had fun, probably because if I didn’t, I would be forced to face the terrible but honest truth that celebrating wasn’t really worth it all.
Over the past few years, however, I have been trying something new. I have been picking something I want to do (typically a brewery or beer-related place/event as I love craft beer) and telling whomever I had been talking to frequently around that time, to join. Close friends or family and doing something I want at a place that I want to be. Sounds pretty great, right? Of course it does. But looking at it objectively, I ask myself a
A Yearly Reminder of Expedience
The point here is that my birthday, or birthdays in general, are examples of where surface level attention and quick hits of feeling loved can be an easy way to replace actual meaning. Celebrating the self for making it another year on this earth, while nice, may result in an expedient hit of pleasure that takes away from the joys that come from celebrating every day being.
Think about it, how much of your birthday is a bunch of people who only remember it’s our birthday from the Facebook email they got that morning? How many reach out on that same Facebook to say “HBD!” Or forgo any attempt at true connection for a double-tap like on your self-indulging “It’s my birthday!” Instagram post?
This omission of meaning is something that happens in life more often than perhaps we’d like to admit. We replace true meaning for something expedient. We unconsciously (or consciously) skip critical thinking for the immediate emotional relief, action, or shortcut to a result. So often, we find ourselves stuck in some way or incredibly eager to take an action of some kind for some self-determined really important thing or reason.
We need change. We need to satiate this desire to do something about the situation we are in. The anxiety kills us.
The result of expedient pursuit of gratification and non-reflective action is likely unconscious repetition. We think we’re making a change or alleviating the anxiety, only to realize some time later that we are back in the same place we had been. Same fight, different relationship. Same job, different company. Same baggage, different trip. Same birthday, different year.
Good Versus Evil
Critical thinking and seeking meaning takes time, it takes effort, it takes patience. It takes a rejection of the expedient path and the potential agony of patience that comes with the more deliberate path.
Unfortunately, we find ourselves putting off long-term commitments for the sake of indulging in short-term pleasures. I mean, why not right? We want to do what feels the best today, succumb to our base-lower level desires. This even leads to lying, cheating, and stealing to get what we want. We do these things even if we know it is inevitably going to screw over our future selves. We know we’re fucking ourselves and yet, still we trek on with the expedient path.
Humans are smart.
Of course, we know this is what we shouldn’t be doing. We know we should be doing the hard things today to make our lives better in the future. We know we should suppress our immediate impulses to bring future rewards.
How often do we turn down that last shot at the bar, regardless of how early work is in the morning? How quick do we turn to aspirin when our heads hurt, rather than take some time to think about where our headache could be coming from to better prevent it from happening in the future? How often to we respond to that angry email immediately, rather than sit with the discomfort of its causes and subsequently learn about ourselves in that process?
There are endless examples of times we forego critical thinking for the sake of immediate action. So many examples that Jordan Peterson made “Pursue What Is Meaningful, Not What Is Expedient” his seventh rule in 12 Rules for Life. He goes so far as to leverage our base-level approach to good and evil to drive home his point.
Peterson uses an elaborate understanding of archetype, myth, and historical instances of good versus evil to outline that if there is such a thing as evil, good is whatever stops evil from happening. Good would be the antithesis of evil as it alleviates unnecessary pain and suffering. In turn, Doing good has meaning.
When we act according to meaning, we will attain more long-term security and strength than would be granted by a short-sighted concern for our own image, in that moment, or over time. What we do will matter and we give ourselves a better chance of feeling better about our existence. The evils and injustices of the world are more tolerable, because we know they can be overcome.
This is how we can live the creed, “Pursue What Is Meaningful, Not What Is Expedient.”
Learning on the Long Road
Clearly the decision to take aspirin for a headache doesn’t quite live up to the good versus evil standard that Peterson uses to give his Rule the strength to be one for life. However, the point of being able to critically think about our decisions in the context of attaining long-term security and strength for ourselves is really worth exploring in any given decision.
Consider how nice it would be to know for sure that drinking a certain amount of water will, without doubt, ensure no headache the next day? Or to have more than one day out of the year feel as relaxed and enjoyable as we deem necessary for a birthday?
There’s a life lesson (or two) here. The underlying requirement here is that we actually take the time and make the effort to understand ourselves and what is actually meaningful to us. That we deliberately work to recognize the areas of our life where we default to or even deliberately choose expedience.
This means questioning the decisions we make, every time. It means listening to feedback (criticism, reactions, or hangovers) and suspending our Ego response enough to allow the feedback to teach us. It means actually changing behavior over time with the deliberate desire to mature ourselves, recognizing that the long, sometimes arduous process of learning is more valuable than a quick hit of assurance, victory, or gain.
Look, we all have those times where we’re feeling down, lost, or confused. That’s a human thing and let’s face it, life fucking sucks a lot of the time. So much of the time, in fact, that big global pharmaceutical corporations make billions of dollars selling us medicine that quickly stops us from feeling down, lost, or confused. Quickly stops us from feeling a lot of things.
More progressively and trendy these days, there has been a movement toward more “natural” methods of helping people out of these darker places like DMT, ayahuasca, and even weed. While these options may certainly be helpful in different circumstances, they still represent expedience. Regardless of what options they are ‘better” than, they are shortcuts and expedient if not done in conjunction with deliberate critical thinking about what is causing us to feel down, lost, and confused in the first place.
Beyond the Birthday
So as I reflect on my birthday today, I am grateful for how meaningful the simple reflection of another year of living can be. I am grateful that those who truly know me can take the symbolism of a birthday to reflect on my growth and evolution with me. I am grateful for those who forego the expedient Facebook post and either attempt to connect in a meaningful way or surrender to the very real truth that it is just another day on the journey.
I am also grateful for the long, challenging path that has built me to this point. Less popularly, perhaps, I am grateful for the meaningful, painful, failure-ridden journey ahead that will continue to strengthen me through deliberate reflection on such experiences.
Understanding this journey, pursuing it yourself, seeing me for the growing being that I am, and realizing that meaningful connection is always available are the best gifts for which I could ask. Whether it’s my birthday or not.ay or not.
