LIFE

How We Can Create Meaning

Is there a simple answer to a difficult question?

How can we create meaning?

Do we know intuitively what the meaning is?

Do we really think too little about it? Is it about this the whole time — finding meaning, creating meaning in what we do?

Or is it not about creating meaning, but about something else?

What if the latter is the case?

What is this ‘something else’?

I want to work on the hypothesis that finding a purpose, a meaning — is — along with getting food, warmth and a roof over your head — one of our basic needs. And this need, this challenge, we try in different ways to fulfill and find solutions.

Some put a lot of work and energy into this, others care little.

Many are bored

When we do not think we have found meaning, it may happen that we feel a little uncomfortable, a little off-piste. We are not completely happy with what is happening and how we feel.

Maybe this is a general human experience, maybe this is something that everyone experiences without really having any particular problem with it. — I know that such is life — it is both ups and downs.

This is how it is, and so it always has been.

Man is very different, man has very different needs.

At the same time, it is also true that human beings have very similar needs, basic needs. They need to feel that there is meaning is perhaps one of the greatest common denominators.

Bored

I have the impression that some people are bored. This is maybe the most common among young people, or maybe not — who knows?

In any case, there is no reason for a person to go out and get bored and say that the time is so slow. It’s something we know, and it’s that we have what we get, our allotted time, but we never know how much time we have.

We know that we have time, and we should take good care of it and use it in good ways.

And it’s all about creating meaning because we feel that we have something meaningful we manage to do, so time goes by without us almost noticing it, time passes and we become wiser, richer while the clock is ticking all the time.

Give advice

What kind of advice can we give to the one who is bored, the one who thinks time goes slowly and that there is no meaning?

Advice to anyone who is bored

Stand up if you are at a standstill, and if you are at full speed — stop and look inside yourself, think and feel: How are you?
If you are not moving but feel that you are at a standstill, that you are stuck — look beyond yourself, look in every direction, look around you, fix your gaze and look inside yourself. Use what you find inside yourself to get out of a standstill.
Find a purpose, find meaning, find something to do, find something to interest you! You need to know for yourself what you can find, there is an ocean of possibilities, so much of interest you can find.

Make a list, e.g. based on this:

Get up, get dressed, get out!

- Get out on a jog! - Go to the store. - Go on a mountain. - Go home and find a book. - Start reading and don’t give up until you are saturated. - Get out the paper and pen, see what happens when you force the pen down on the paper! - Write! Try to get words to stick to the paper or screen. - Write about something you like or dislike, write about something you want, write about something you’ve lost. - Write about what is self-evident, write about what is not self-evident. - Get rid of what you’re stuck in. - Tell about an important person in your life! - Tell about your father. - Tell about your mother. - Write to be free, to be who you want to be.

What do I have in common with my father?

My father was born in 1915.

He had no education beyond elementary school. He grew up in the 1930s and was a young adult during World War II, and was not given the opportunity to graduate.

As a young man, he left the farm where he grew up. He was a period before the war in Bergen, where he was a private driver.

When the war came, he was looking for work in different places and tried to do as best he could. He began working in 1945 or 1946 at the Odda smelter as an unskilled worker, and at this factory, he remained throughout his professional career.

Over the years, working at the factory ensures he and his family a steady income. I think he liked the factory, even though the working environment was dangerous and there were many health injuries.

He and many others who worked in vulnerable places in the factory eventually got pretty poor health.

My dad quit when he was in his early sixties. He lived until he was 74, but his health was not good.

But even with the health problems, he went to the retirement workshop that the factory had set up for the pensioners, and there he worked with wood and made bowls and dishes he gave as Christmas presents.

My father was very creative and productive. We have many bowls and plates made of wood that he has made.

In common with my father

What I have most in common with my dad is that I have to be creative in my work, and I also see in myself his ability and willingness to be actively engaged in some matter instead of sitting passively with his hands in caught.

My dad was made so he had to do something all the time, so when he wasn’t busy at work or sleeping after a night shift, he was out fishing. He put nets in the fjord, he built his own boathouse past the bathing place, and at night he stood many times in the Opo River and fished salmon.

He bought a wooden boat from Strandebarm which he took home to Odda.

He fished every day and sold fish to customers on his way home from the boathouse, and had this as a small additional income to the fairly low factory salary.

The way I see it, my dad was a man who always had to do something, he had to be productive and creative all the time, and he continued that when he stopped working at the factory. He went to the retirement workshop every day and worked there every day until he died.

There is always something you can do

There is a pearl of wisdom and a knowledge of life in this, namely that there is always something you can do for yourself. You can always decide on something and start the job of doing what you have decided.

In our time with many different offers in leisure and virtually all the time while you are at work and no matter where you are, traveling or whatever, there are always many new opportunities to offer.

But on the other hand, there are also many distractions in the time we live in, and many people today find it difficult to find peace and space in order to concentrate on those things.

One of the major challenges today is being able to choose in all the unsorted information and all the impulses we are bombarded with. We must choose what we want to take over and try to process it. And shut everything else out of our consciousness. And it’s not easy. Most people can struggle with it.

Searching for meaning

We are struggling today to look for things that enable us to fill life with meaning, we are bored, we strive to calm down so that we can concentrate.

Instead, we are dragged from impression to impression, we are bombarded with sensory impressions, visual impressions flickering past, hearing impressions that are always there in the background, a few times stronger, other times weaker.

One very clear example of this is TV, the linear television, the television set that is on at home, all day or at least the whole evening while the family is watching. Most of the time, they still do not watch TV, nor do they watch each other. They look at their small screens on mobile or iPad or computer, for mobile, iPad and computer are there all the time. They are a central part of the time we are all part of.

I see a big difference between watching and using the TV in the way many people now use TV, and on the other hand actively using computers, iPad and mobile. The latter requires a good deal of the user, a good deal of thought and a good deal of own will to control what is to happen. For many people, using a computer, iPad and mobile can be serious work, but for others a rather thoughtless pastime.

The glue of social media

In the time we live in, we can be swallowed up by easy-going entertainment channels, we let ourselves be dragged into social media of various kinds, different types of entertainment channels, websites and video channels.

What happens when we watch these channels? — Is it just a futile pastime where we let ourselves be entertained? If we don’t entertain us to death — then at least to passivity? A a stunned existence where one looks superficially and almost unconsciously on episodes where the ingredients are odd peculiarities, situational comics and verbal outcomes of the more coarse variety.

The challenge for many is to get through such long daily hours on social media without perishing in boredom.

The whole time it is about moving our minds and, to a certain extent, also the feelings in the direction of something a little vague, undefined for us.

Much of the impact we expose ourselves to on TV screens, computers, tablets, and mobile is about making us largely passive users who make us manipulate the different screens in one direction: click here, click there, buy!

The time we spend watching social media and the like on mobile, computer and tablet is very much lost wasted time.

It is basically about accepting that

you are not good enough,
what you have is not good enough
the best thing you can do is to click here, click there.

“Click and buy! Enter your card details and we’ll arrange it!”

Exactly this is not very creative or activity-creating. But many may think a little differently about this. Those who sit with a small screen can let their fingers go here and there, and then there is also communication! It is also to be creative — in a way!

Create something yourself

I think the best way to use these new tools — ie mobile, tablet, computer — is to create something yourself. It is to write or draw or take a picture and create something of what you find and put it together. It then becomes a product, a text, a picture, a video that you post and show the world.

Then you can take the step from the large, more or less passively receiving group of readers and listeners to the in a number smaller, creative part of mankind.

A world of new opportunities

This is a totally new and unique situation. We can create and share worldwide things that we could not share only 20 years ago. We have so many opportunities today, and many of these are good things for humanity.

I don’t say we should not watch TV, I don’t say we should not be on social media.

The value or non-value resides in how we use these tools, these media.

Sitting watching linear TV day after day and night after night with the same kind og repetitive content is not the most engaging activity you can choose.

However, I should not condemn TV series because when you watch TV this can also create images, thoughts, and feelings in you. This happens every single day, and that is why there are so many still watching TV.

The TV is images and sounds and individuals and personalities you come close to, and so seen TV can be good too.

But what I feel for my own part, is that the television set interferes with me because it is a fixed set of content that you give access to in your living room, and the content on the TV penetrates into your life, into your head, and to a certain extent give direction and govern what goes on there.

However, TV can also be positive for creating a sense of community, such as when we use services such as Netflix or nrk.tv (Norwegian state owned channel) and decide to look together on a series or a movie that we both like.

We agree with each other when and where we are going to watch, and then we have a pleasant time together, not that we watch very much each other, but we have small comments and statements going between us, and there can be very good fellowship in such as well.

The big project for all people — a realistic world view, and the Purpose

I think we must be prepared to keep doing what we can. We have to create our own world, and we have to create our own way of dealing with the world out there, so we have things in the right place.

The big project for all people is to get a realistic world view in place, and then I talk first and foremost about what’s closest, what’s around you, and in the next, what’s a little farther away.