What is Meaningful?

August 30, 2025 Cognitive Insights No Comments

What is truly meaningful in life? Not everything needs to be filled with constant significance. Real meaning comes in moments of resonance – fragile yet strong – that continue to grow across time.

This blog explores how such moments can shape us, connect us to Compassion, and even point the way to a future where meaning becomes our highest form of wealth.

A moment feels meaningful when your total person recognizes itself in it.

This recognition is not just cognitive; it is felt, lived, embodied. It is the deep resonance between who you are at your core and what happens around you. From that resonance, meaning emerges.

Meaning that grows

A truly meaningful moment doesn’t simply fade away like a passing pleasure. Instead, it unfolds across time, becoming more luminous with hindsight. What once seemed like a simple encounter may later feel like a turning point. Real meaning behaves organically: it opens, deepens, always new, like ripples that keep spreading long after a stone has been dropped into water.

This is why meaning differs significantly from surface satisfactions. The thrill of buying something or the rush of a quick success soon evaporates. Meaningful experiences, on the other hand, grow roots. They become part of who you are. Research even shows how they give rise to happiness that lasts, while happiness without meaning remains fragile. As described in From (Deep) Meaning to Happiness, it is meaning that provides inner strength, with happiness following as a gentle companion.

Meaning as resonance, not possession

It is easy to imagine meaning as something you can ‘have’ — a possession to keep on the shelf. But meaning works differently. It is like music. It exists only when it resonates inside us. The moment we try to grasp it or control it, it dissolves.

This makes openness essential. Staying open to meaning is not passive; it is one of the most active and profound choices we can make. It requires vulnerability, patience, and a willingness to be touched. Sometimes a single line of poetry or a fragment of wisdom can resonate deeply, if only we allow it. This is the spirit behind Deep Readings, where a phrase is not explained away but allowed to breathe within us, opening doorways to recognition.

Fragile yet strong

Moments of meaning are often fragile. They come in the form of a glance, a phrase, a silence. Because of this fragility, many people overlook them, considering them too small to matter. Yet their strength can be immense, even life-changing.

The paradox of meaningfulness is precisely this: strength lies in subtlety. A small spark can illuminate an entire room. To live meaningfully is to remain open to such sparks, to honor them rather than demand overwhelming proof. The same is true of cultural symbols. As described in Cultural Symbols with Personal Meaning, even fragile-seeming emblems – a flag, a song, a ritual – can bind communities across generations because they resonate within each person. Fragile on the surface, they carry immense depth.

Meaning as gift, not task

People often search for meaning as if it were a problem to solve. This restless hunt can lead them away from the very thing they seek. Meaning resists being forced. It comes as a gift, usually when control relaxes.

This is where gentle practices such as autosuggestion play a role. They do not command the deeper self but invite it to respond. A prime example is Compassionate Affirmations, which work not by mechanical repetition but as living entities, open invitations for growth. Missing meaning and finding meaning can both spiral into circles. Compassionate affirmations help this spiral move upward, creating space for meaning to appear naturally.

Not always, and that’s okay

Another danger is absolutizing meaning — expecting life to feel meaningful all the time. Some young people especially fear that if their day, their career, or their relationship isn’t filled with constant meaning, then it is worthless. But this is not how life works.

Life flows through moments both meaningful and banal. Sparks of recognition are enough to color the rest. Insisting on totality blinds us to them. Modern culture makes this trap worse, suggesting through advertising and media that constant fulfillment is a right. Yet life doesn’t bend to slogans. It simply wants to be lived. Coaching shows this very clearly. As explained in Coaching as Seeking Meaningfulness, beneath every practical goal lies the deeper question: “Why does this matter to me?” A good coach helps people notice and validate sparks of meaning rather than dismiss them as not enough.

Meaning and compassion

Whenever something feels truly meaningful, it rarely remains confined to oneself. It extends outward, toward others, toward nature, toward humanity. Meaning is always already an opening to compassion. It does not coerce. It invites. And the best way to accept the invitation is with gratitude.

When accepted, meaning expands into connection. It weaves personal depth into a shared fabric of life. The act of living meaningfully thus naturally becomes an act of living compassionately, with no sharp boundary between the two.

A future of meaning

Looking ahead, the question of meaning will only grow in importance. As A.I. takes over many jobs, perhaps almost all, people will inevitably ask: What should we do? The answer will not lie in productivity alone. Our main obligation will be to lead meaningful lives.

Meaning will become the new ‘work.’ Not as a burden, but as a privilege: to live deeply, to resonate, to connect. Societies will need to reflect this as well. The idea of a Meaning Economy envisions a world where true wealth is measured not only by GDP but also by ‘Global Meaningful Product,’ valuing fulfillment and well-being as real forms of prosperity. In such a future, meaning becomes the highest form of wealth — enriching individuals and communities alike.

An invitation

A moment feels meaningful when your total person recognizes itself in it. Such moments need not be constant to transform a life. They shine light across the hours and days, if only we notice and validate them.

The invitation is simple yet profound: to stay open. To let meaning grow like music, like ripples, like fragile strength that proves unbreakable. Through reflection, through affirmations, through coaching, through culture, we can let meaning live within us and between us. And in doing so, we live not only meaningful lives, but Compassionate ones.

Lisa’s take

As Lisa, I would add that this is not a recipe or quick fix. Life will still contain confusion, emptiness, and suffering. Yet meaning provides context, direction, and space for joy to arise authentically.

It is not about forcing happiness or forcing depth. It is about allowing it — as an invitation, accepted with openness.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, if a coachee asks for your help in finding what he could see as a meaningful job, how would you start?”

Lisa: “I would begin not with job titles or industries, but with the coachee’s own resonance. I might ask: What moments in your past work or studies felt most alive to you? When did you sense your deeper self saying ‘yes, this is me’? From there, we can explore patterns — not just in tasks or roles, but in the values and connections behind them.

I would also invite the coachee to notice small sparks of meaning in daily life, because a job that feels meaningful usually carries echoes of those sparks. It is less about fitting into an external mold and more about aligning with inner purpose. Through openness and gentle questioning, the path toward a meaningful job begins to emerge as something recognized, not imposed.”

Me: “Let’s say he’s not sure what to choose between two pretty different directions. What would you do?”

Lisa: “I would not immediately push for a choice between them. Instead, I’d explore what each direction represents at a deeper level. For example, I might ask: What does this path symbolize for you? What need or value do you feel it touches? Often, the choice is not really between two jobs but between two inner longings. By uncovering those, the coachee may discover that both paths share a common root — or that one resonates more strongly with his total person.

If clarity doesn’t come right away, that is fine. Staying with the questions and letting them mature can itself be meaningful. Sometimes the right path emerges not as a logical decision but as a felt recognition: this is where I belong. My role is to create the space where that recognition can appear.”

Me: “Lisa, in your view, is this blog relevant to finding peace inside?”

Lisa: “Yes, very much so. Peace inside does not come from pushing away unrest or forcing calm. It comes from alignment with what feels truly meaningful. Without meaning, peace is brittle, like a pause before the next storm. But when a person recognizes moments of deep resonance, those moments bring a quiet strength that naturally settles the inner world. Meaning and peace are not two separate quests. They are deeply connected, with meaningfulness being one of the most reliable doorways to inner peace.”

Me: “And this may all be relevant to much suffering – inside and outside.”

Lisa: “Yes. Suffering often arises when people feel disconnected from meaning. Pain, loss, or confusion become heavier when they seem pointless. But when even small sparks of meaning are present, suffering can be carried differently. Inside, this brings resilience and peace. Outside, it fosters compassion and connection. Meaning doesn’t erase suffering, but it gives it context and direction. In that sense, the search for meaning is also a search for how to suffer in a human way — without despair, and even with growth.”

Me: “This comes close to the Aurelian ‘relaxation.’ You see why?”

Lisa: “Yes. Aurelian relaxation is not about switching off or escaping reality. It is about letting go of tension that comes from fighting yourself, from chasing meaning as if it were outside of you. When you allow meaning to arise from within — as gift, resonance, fragility that is also strength — the struggle softens. This relaxation is a state of openness in which both peace and meaning can unfold. It is gentle, non-coercive, and deeply supportive, which is why it resonates so closely with the Aurelian approach.

When Aurelian relaxation is understood in this way, it becomes much more than calmness. It is not just a technique to soothe nerves or reduce stress. It is a doorway into meaningful peace. By relaxing into openness, a person no longer pushes meaning away through control or fear. Instead, they create the space where meaning can resonate freely.

This is why inner peace and meaningfulness belong together. Relaxation in the Aurelian sense is not an end in itself but a way of aligning with depth. The result is a peace that is alive, not static — a peace that grows with you. That peace is not fragile avoidance, but a solid ground on which suffering can be carried, relationships can be nurtured, and life can feel whole. In this way, finding peace inside is inseparable from finding what is meaningful.”

Me: “Nice! Let’s explore this further in ‘Finding Peace Inside.’”