What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be alive in the specific time, place, and society you live in? What is your purpose? How do you find that purpose, and then how do you act on that purpose? How should you live, mindful of that purpose and—just as important—how do you live if you don’t have a clear sense of your purpose?
These are some pretty big questions, the kind of questions that philosophers, theologians, and psychologists deal with. And they’re the kinds of questions that high school students thinking about college deal with. Where will you go? What will you study? Will you actually have access to the place that seems right for you, and will you be able to do what it takes to succeed? Who will you meet? What will you do after college? How will college change you as a person, and will it be a good change? All of these questions—subtly for some, overwhelmingly for others—have to do with identity, meaning, and purpose. It’s one of the reasons college applications can be so difficult.
Lately I’ve been listening to Making Meaning, a podcast series from Ministry of Ideas, a Harvard Divinity School initiative. Each episode is a short (around 10 minutes) interview with someone about how to think about our own meaning and purpose.
Episode four is really, really great. That episode features Michael Steger, the founder and director of the Center for Meaning and Purpose at Colorado State University. I hope you’ll listen to the whole episode, but I want to point out two things from it.
One is that Steger reminds us that meaning ins’t something fixed and unchangeable. It’s an ongoing process that has no end as we grow. As he puts it:
We are not some iceberg just grinding our way toward a defenseless island. You know, we’re something that freezes sometimes and something that melts sometimes and something that drifts sometimes. And sometimes something that steers ourselves sometimes.
Remember this if you’re struggling to find meaning at times, or if you sense your purpose changing and you’re not sure how you feel about it. If you’re unsure what sort of a future you’re setting yourself up for, it can be difficult to know what to do for the next big step, which is college. But understand that your purpose can change, and that it’s influenced by a lot of things beyond just our choosing. So be kind to yourself and think about what you do know that you want, need, and have to give in return from college (or even not going to college). Don’t focus on what’s not there and what you don’t know.
The other great thing is that he gives a simple and practical exercise we can do to help us understand what meaning and purpose we already have for ourselves:
So just take a camera, or your phone probably. Take some time, limit the number of photos you’re going to take. Maybe just five. Maybe seven. Some small, singular, single-digit number. And take a photo of things that speak to you, what makes your life meaningful. It can be a person, it can be a pet. It can be something you made, it can be a special place. Particularly during the pandemic it might be a picture of a person, or a picture of a special place. You know, or it might be a souvenir you brought back. Who knows what it is. But take that picture and spend a little bit of time thinking to yourself about why you took that photo, why it’s meaningful to you. And then share it with someone, tell that little story.
Taking the time to do this photo exercise sincerely and seriously can be extremely useful. While Steger is the director of the Center of Meaning and Purpose, not me, I still want to suggest two things about this exercise he recommends. First, wait until after you’ve taken the photos and really thought about them before deciding who to share them with. If you have an audience in mind, that can skew what sorts of things you take photos of and then what you think about them. Do the sharing part significantly later than the thinking part. Also, push yourself to move past the first level or two of answers about why something is significant. Ask yourself why a lot. Dig deeper. Make connections.
I hope you enjoy the episode, and perhaps the entire series. Meaning and purpose are fun, if scary, things to think about. You’ll do it before college. You’ll do it in college. You’ll continue doing it long after college is over.
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