We all want to be meaningful. Meaningful as in: of significance to another. Whatever your status or intention, it is a common drive. Even if the intention is in my opinion a reprehensible intention.
Being meaningful. Meaning something to others. For the family, for a community, for young people or even the elderly. Disabled people, children, the environment, animals, the country, the earth, science. It never ends and it is all important. In fact: being meaningful gives us energy.
Meaningful and passive. Meaningful and mentally lazy. Meaningful and negligent. Meaningful and lazy. Do they fit together? No, certainly not.
To satisfy that urge for meaning, something important is asked of you. A condition for this is that you strive for depth. Deepening, that is growth. Personal development and self-knowledge. Thinking, reading and learning. Investing. Weighing your own opinion against other opinions. Postponing your opinion or even: not giving it at all. Sitting on your hands and keeping your mouth shut. Judging without judging.
Without deepening – or: enrichment – you pass on nothing but your own shortcomings.
Knowledge and wisdom do not just come to you. It requires choices. What do you read in the evening? Which TV programs do you watch? Who do you listen to? Who are your friends? Sometimes it is also about financial choices. Do you spend your free budget on 'bling bling' or on a study or a trajectory? Do you prefer to invest in superficialities or in reflection?
For me everything is fine, I am quite liberal, long live freedom. Do what you want. Knowledge and wisdom are in abundance. Even without your unique contribution there is enough of it. However: the same applies to stupidity. Question of conscience: what do you want to contribute to? To increase or to improve?
Knowledge is something different than wisdom. Knowledge is knowing and wisdom is seeing. And then you also have insight. Related to knowledge and wisdom, but still different. In order to be of significance to someone else, you have to invest in yourself.
But there is something else. You can only be truly meaningful if your satisfaction does not depend on the amount of gratitude you do or do not receive. Transferring without wanting anything in return is a different mindset. And not at all self-evident.
We here – in this commercial society – live more or less according to the principle of reckoning. You-do-something-for-me-I-do-something-for-you. I’ll help you get a nice job. In a few years I’ll come back to you so that you…
I personally think that is the wrong approach.
'Doing something for someone else' is only meaningful if it is selfless.
Investing in your own development is the only acceptable form of self-enrichment.
Hans Ruinemans, boardroom monk