3rd post - What is the meaning of life?

According to Jordan Peterson, the meaning is found by taking responsibility. By now you can probably tell that I am a fan of Jordan. I did not agree with this particular point of his for a long time, but after mulling it over, I ended up agreeing with him.

First of all, what is responsibility?

Responsibility, according to Google, is the state of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone.

A duty is a moral obligation. And another way of saying "something that must be dealt with" is an action that must be done.

Finally, everyone has a duty of control over someone - themselves.

Thus my interpretation of responsibility is the moral obligation to do what must be done for yourself.

Well, this raises the question "Is there anything that you must do in life"? If there was, then that should be the meaning of life.

I would argue that the thing that you must do in life is to make your life meaningful/ worth living.

This is why meaning is found in taking responsibility.

So responsibility is your moral obligation to make your life meaningful. This is how I interpret Jordan's teachings and I believe that you are not successful in life until you have achieved this.

In my quest to form my own opinion on what makes life meaningful, I decided to research what do people desire or search for in life.

According to Maslov's hierarchy of needs, our desires rank as follows:
1. physical needs: food, water, shelter, sleep
2. safety needs: protection & predictable environment (i.e a house, the law)
3. belonging needs: friends and family
4. esteem needs: feeling accomplished
5. self-actualization needs: achieving your full potential

From this hierarchy, I started to believe that to succeed in life, you really only need 2 things: meeting your survival needs and need to feel important. That is the most fundamental meaning of life, and it is your responsibility to achieve it.

I believe that our physical needs and our safety needs are part of the same need to survive, while our belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs are part of the same need to feel important.

To have a meaningful and successful life you need to survive. That's common sense. But my bigger discovery is that everyone want's to feel important.

It's no wonder why you can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Let's brainstorm a list of important things in life: good health. relationships. a place of belonging. feeling appreciated. feeling respected. ability/competence. service/ helping others. personal identity. responsibility. personal growth. control. fun. pleasure. engagement. having children.

Notice a pattern? All important things in life serve the purpose of surviving or feeling important (or at least not being/ feeling inferior)!

A lot of our mindset and behavior can be traced back to our desire to feel important.

For example, you are more likely to feel inferior when you are compared to those like you. A peasant is not envious of a king, but of other peasants that pulled themselves out of poverty. This is because the peasant who pulled himself out of poverty makes the other peasant feel ashamed.

Studies have also shown that making 50,000 a year when your co-workers make 30,000 a year correlates with more happiness than making 100,000 a year when your co-workers make 120,000.  Thus to succeed in life, after you meet your survival needs, you will want to satisfy your need of importance and you need to become "better" than other (i.e by being healthier, being more respected/competent, having a strong relationship with your children, having more freedom, doing more good in the world, being more enlightened in your views, being more engaged in life, having more fun, etc). Some things are more important then others, depending on the individual, and if you feel something makes your life meaningful (making money, making music, making kids) it is because you are proud of it because it makes you "better".

So what are the elements of a happy/ meaningful/ successful life that you can improve on to feel; better about yourself? Check out my top 10 list of things that we desire. By improving on these 10 aspects of life, you will find your life to feel much more meaningful.