Finding Meaning Doesn't Require Striving

Since I was seven, I’ve had the long-term view of life in mind. You know, that view of the future where there’s a threshold of experiences and achievements to reach, beyond which you’re satisfied. Where the angst of not belonging was over, the aspiration of being a world-improving scientist was achieved, and I could finally stop worrying—that heart thumping 3 o’clock in the morning type of worry—about how to get there or if I would ever get there. Yet I’ve never really got there.

Implicit in my impatient anticipation was the rather idealistic—yet also burdensome notion—that worldly life could satisfy the longings of the human heart. Satisfaction via worldly goals is pretty compelling, after all. The experience of love, of achievements, and of commitment to a purpose give a wonderful “thrill,” to use C.S. Lewis’s term. The thrill of transcending daily existence and seemingly encountering...

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