Living life with meaning and purpose

Today’s Bloganuary prompt connects perfectly not only with my own life plans but also my career as an Occupational therapist. So here we are, January 8th:

What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

When I was in my early 20s I wanted to live until 125. I don’t know why that number is in my head but that was the age, a very long long life for me!

However, as I’ve grown older (I’m only 32 this year but definitely wiser than 10 years ago) and have worked in the healthcare field, I believe I have changed my thoughts around living a very long life.

As we age, and I experience loss of family members, changes in my body, and watch the changes of the people around me, I realize there is more to having a quality of life versus a quantity. When I worked as an Occupational therapist in public health and would travel to the homes of elderly adults to help them with physical mobility and their overall home health, I noticed a trend. There were clients who were very surrounded by love and passion and hobbies, who aside from their physical struggle at the moment seemed to be thriving. Even in the harshest scenarios these people were happy. Then there were the elderly individuals who didn’t have family that connected with them, lived a very lonely life and did not do much other than lie in bed or watch tv. This was not a quality of life in my opinion, they were tired, unhappy and it seemed that their pains and sorrows were the focus of their life.

All of this very much makes sense in the overall of life. I’ve mentioned the concept of occupational therapy before in many other posts, but this reflection about living long brings up the importance of social connection, meaning and purpose in life.

Now being in my 30s, I recognize how much the quality of life you live can impact your happiness and enjoyment of life. I don’t want to live until 125 if I’m miserable and lonely. I don’t want to feel stuck in my life, I want to enjoy the life I live. So if that means I live a bit of a shorter but higher quality life, I’ll take it.

One of the big things that I saw working with elderly adults is the sadness around loss of work, hobbies etc and this led to a lack of meaning and purpose. If you connect with the definitions and the information below, maybe it’s time to look into how you can improve your quality of life 🙂

Meaning is the emotional significance of what we do; the importance we give to something. It’s why we do what we do. Meaning doesn’t just exist on its own, it’s something we create and feel, and it’s closely linked to motivation. Being connected to emotions, this makes sense as to why something may be meaningful to some but not others. For example, it may be meaningful to some to sit by their record player and enjoy a full length record from start to finish and enjoy the story that comes from it (this is my wife), whereas for me, music is more about enjoying the sound and less about any sort of story or even the lyrics sometimes, so this wouldn’t be a meaningful activity for me. We can see this in another example in running. For some running is a chore, a boring workout that we do to lose weight and stay fit. For others, there may be an important meaning to it that motivates us to enjoy running frequently throughout the week. Maybe you’re training to run a marathon to raise money for an important cause that is meaningful to you, or maybe running makes you feel mentally clear or powerful. Maybe you connect running with the community you enjoy as you run with a club every week. Whatever the meaning is, if it’s there, running is more enjoyable to you than to someone that doesn’t have a meaning connected to it.

Purpose is the cumulative effect of meaningful goals. Purpose is less tangible; we define purpose as a long-term aim or guiding principle based on meaning. It’s the impact we want to have on the world. This one is tougher to give examples to because I also feel like this one is a personal emotional concept. Some people may feel their purpose is to create art or to help others, or perhaps it’s to be a parent. Sometimes purpose in my opinion may be less tangible and might be just a feeling. For example, through my occupational therapy career, I’ve kind of discovered that I think my purpose is just to make people feel seen, heard and safe. I can tell this is part of my overall purpose as well as I feel so happy when I can create that environment for friends and family as well. I have a friend who is a soon to be doctor and is always very stressed, and one time she came to visit and got so cozy in our hygge home that she fell asleep and I felt proud that I could create that space for her.

Meaning is the why to what we do, and purpose is that overall impact we want to leave on the earth.

Often times, we get stuck in capitalistic society where we put so much of our energy into productivity being work and keeping an Instagramable home, that we lose the other meaningful activities in our lives. As children we find meaning in so many activities such as reading, playing, riding bikes, art, etc… and when we grow up we somehow forget that this can also be part of our enjoyment of life, our meaning and our purpose. Finding meaning outside of work may have been something you experienced the struggle around if you lost your job during COVID. For some, they dove into different hobbies and meaningul activities such as trying to bake bread, do art, learn tik tok dances, explore puzzles etc. For others who may have lost the insight into their hobbies and interests because they were so consumed by their once jobs, they may have experienced loss of identity, low moods etc.

As we age, a lot of our activities change. We may retire from our life long career, may not be physically capable of playing competitive sports or may lose access to the materials we need such as not having a piano in our current home when that was your big passion. Being able to recognize the loss of one activity and finding other things to keep us connected to meaning and purpose in life can be life changing. It could mean the difference between a quality life or one that feels endless.

Why did I write this post this way?

I have been reflecting a lot on my own life, purpose and meaning as the new year came around. I’ve experienced a lot of change in 2023, with deaths of loved ones, changes in friends, emotions around the state of the world, and realizations about some of my past interests. So for 2024, my goal is to explore new passions, hobbies and social connections and I wanted to extend that challenge to you as well!

What is your purpose in life? Do you have meaningful activities you like engaging in outside of your job? What new hobbies can you add to your life this year?

I want to try clay pottery this year, doing more painting and junk journalling, getting back to some dance classes and exploring more friend outings. What are you going to try? 🙂