A Meaningful Life

The psychologist Emily Esfahani Smith, author of “The Power of Meaning,” defines a meaningful life as one containing four qualities: transcendence, purpose, belonging and storytelling. (Here is her three-minute video on the subject.)

I know I may be biased, but I believe all four of these qualities can be found through writing personal narrative.

1)    The time spent lost in writing can feel transcendent.

2)    What we write about can illuminate our purpose or the people and things we care about most.

3)    A moment of connection via words offers a sense of belonging for both the writer and the reader.

4)    Recounting a tale from one’s life is, after all, storytelling.

So shouldn’t it follow then that the eight elements found in writing powerful personal narratives are also ones important to living full and meaningful lives?

Consider:

DETAILS that pop in a story tend to cling to us in life.

SCENE orients us and sets a tone.

LANGUAGE reflects what we fundamentally believe,

PACING of our stories and sentence lengths illustrate our natural rhythms.

STRUCTURE differences remind us there are multiple ways to tell a story. that our stories are uniquely ours.

STORYLINE gives us the all-important what happened.

THEME asks what is our story about?

VOICE is the sound of one’s soul.

It’s not surprising to me that the years I’ve spent reading, writing and unpacking essays and memoirs have made me more open minded, open hearted and more empathetic.

Imagine how much more meaning we could make of our lives if we could also keep these qualities front and center.

Photo by EBB.

Upcoming

There are a few spaces left for my “Writing the Spiritual Essay” workshop (online) that begins tomorrow! (November 3. 2022.) Find out more here.