What is life about?

Are you wondering what is life about? Gail Sheehy (1976), her book Passages, describes seven stages of adult development. She sees transitional stages in adulthood where we question and re-evaluate the choices that we have made earlier in our lives. Life becomes more complex and you start to question what is life about? Maybe this is where you find yourself, wondering about your life purpose and what is life for?

One of the most powerful tools I have encountered for creating meaning in life and answering the question of “who am I?” is writing out a chronological life history.

Life gives us very little time to reflect on what is actually happening. We rush through each day, then week, until we find ourselves surprised at how much time has passed. It is months and sometimes years before we stop to look around at what is going on in our lives. Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to actually stop. But even in the stopping we often don’t look too far back, just far enough to understand what just happened. However what just happened, almost always has happened before. We develop both healthy and unhealthy patterns in our lives, but rarely go back to the beginning of our adulthood to see what choices we have been making. Looking at this with fresh eyes allows us to examine the meaning and patterns that we have created.

By writing out a life history, what we have done, it becomes more tangible.

A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.
-Steve Jobs

Like Steve Jobs says you can start to connect the dots. However unlike Steve Jobs employees you will see that you have lots of dots to connect and when you start to do that work, the patterns of your life history become clear. This then starts to help you find the meaning of your life.

Most of us live our lives by simply moving through a routine. Get up, go to work, come home, walk the dog, make dinner, watch tv, and go to bed. Repeat. As Robert Heinlein states “In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it”.  Our lives are much richer than daily trivia when we examine all the events that make up a year. While you may have forgotten what you had for dinner last week you will be amazed at how much you can remember about your life history when you set out to do so.

At first it seems like a simple task. Start in the year that you left home and using short sentences list everything that happened that year. It might look something like this at the start:

1997- Graduated high school. Moved to Peterborough to start University. My best friend Pat moved to Kingston to go to college. Met my friend Payton in Biology 101.

That would be an excellent start. What you will find however is that as you start to turn events over in your mind you will remember richer details of those years. This does not usually come on the first draft. The memories of events come at unusual times and you will find yourself wanting to grab a pen so you can capture that memory. As an example I somehow managed to forget that I had travelled to Greece for two weeks in my twenties. One of my friends forgot she had her Level 5 piano. These reclaimed memories are where you start to find the meaning in life and what life is about.

Eventually your entries will look more like this:

1997- Graduated high school with a B+ average. Moved to Peterborough to start University, hated my dorm roommate. My best friend Pat moved to Kingston to go to college, we drifted apart. Pat wanted to come down and party all the time and I needed to study. Met my friend Payton in Biology 101, we spent every Thursday in the library going over our notes and then heading off to the pub for a pint. My sister was hospitalized for her appendix. My mom sent care packages every month always with enough homemade cookies to share.  Saw Jurassic Park with my dad when he came down to visit.

You can see the difference between the two life history entries. At first you only remember high level events. But as you start to reflect back on experiences you will see how life is also about things like going to concerts, hockey games, events that were happening in your family, you move out of the major changes mode of thinking and into the experience of life.

When you engage in this activity you will see how rich and full a life you have already lived. It also helps you to see how many challenges and hardships you have already overcome. It will also help you to reconnect with what you life purpose is. When you dig into your life history your life purpose seems to unfold effortlessly for you.

Answering what is life about? How to start:

Most people start when they leave home because this often is the start of adulthood. However in some cases adulthood is thrust upon people by traumatic events. Pick the point in time where you feel you moved from being dependent to having to take independent action. Some people don’t leave home until later in their twenties. In this case start when you finished high school.

Areas to consider:

There are many elements that make up our lives. When reflecting on each year think about the following areas:

Family

Health

Transitions

Employment

Where you lived

Friends

Travel

Recreation

Volunteer

Languages

Caution- Emotions ahead

This activity can dredge up emotions and hurt that you thought had put behind you. Many people I know have tackled this task with a glass of wine in hand as they sift through the memories that make up their life history. While everyone says it is rewarding, no one says it is easy. However no one should really believe that answering what is life about would be easy.

While it might not seem that a life history would lead to uncovering your life purpose, it often provides the inspiration and insight that is needed to re-chart your course as you discover the meaning of your life.