Living for Something That Outlasts You
THE FLOURISHING LIFE • Post 4 of 10
Human Flourishing | Jay Poland, MA, LCPC, IBCC Certified Human Flourishing Coach
There is a kind of exhaustion I notice in people that has nothing to do with sleep deprivation.
These are often busy, productive, even successful people. They have jobs, families, responsibilities that keep them moving from morning to night. And yet, beneath all of that activity, something feels hollow. Empty in a way they cannot quite name.
When I create space in a conversation for them to slow down and say what they actually think, the same word surfaces again and again.
Pointless.
Not hopeless. Not helpless. Just — pointless. Like they are spinning a lot of plates and could not tell you why any of them matter.
That is a meaning crisis. And it is more common than we like to admit.
The Question Beneath the Question
Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps and went on to found logotherapy, argued that the primary human motivation is not pleasure or power — it is meaning. His landmark book Man's Search for Meaning documents his observation that prisoners who retained a sense of purpose — even in the most horrifying conditions imaginable — were far more likely to survive, psychologically and physically, than those who lost it.
A person can bear almost any how if they have a compelling enough why.
VanderWeele's research identifies meaning and purpose as one of the five core domains of flourishing — and it is arguably the most life-giving, because a strong sense of meaning tends to sustain people through the erosion of the others. When health is compromised, when relationships are strained, when happiness is elusive, meaning can carry a person forward.
Take meaning away, and even a comfortable life can become unbearable.
"Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun." — Ecclesiastes 2:11
Solomon, who had everything anyone could want — wealth, wisdom, pleasure, power — concluded that none of it produced meaning. Not because those things are inherently worthless, but because they cannot answer the deepest questions of human existence. They cannot tell you who you are, why you are here, or what your life is ultimately for.
The Difference Between Purpose and Goals
It is worth making a distinction I find enormously helpful in my work with people.
Goals are things you accomplish. Purpose is the reason you are doing anything at all.
Goals are time-limited. Purpose is not. Goals are personal. Purpose, when it is rightly understood, always connects you to something beyond yourself — other people, a mission, the world God is making.
A person can achieve every goal they set and still be living without purpose. And a person can fail to reach many of their goals and still be living with profound purpose.
Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10 that we are God's poiema — the Greek root of our word poem — created in Christ Jesus for good works prepared in advance for us to do. That is an extraordinary claim. It means your life is not an accident. There is a particular contribution you were made to make, woven into the fabric of your existence before you were born.
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." — Jeremiah 29:11
This promise, originally given to exiles in Babylon — people who had lost everything — carries a radical implication: even in circumstances that feel like the complete derailment of your story, God's purposeful intention for your life is not canceled.
When Meaning Feels Distant
I want to be careful here, because I have met people for whom the concept of purpose feels more like pressure than hope. They hear "you were made for something significant" and feel anxious rather than energized.
To those people, I want to say two things.
First, meaning is often found in the ordinary. Raising children faithfully. Showing up with integrity to work that is not glamorous. Caring for aging parents. Listening well to a struggling friend. These are not obstacles to purpose — in many cases, they are the purpose.
Second, meaning is something you grow into, not something you discover all at once. It is cultivated over time through reflection, experience, and honest conversation. Some of the most meaningful work I do with the people I walk alongside is simply helping them slow down enough to hear their own story — and begin to see what it is actually about.
When you can name your story, you can live it with intention. And intentional living is at the heart of what it means to flourish.
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Next in the series: Post 5 — The Forgotten Virtue: Character in a World That Rewards Performance
