what is meaning 2

8/12/2019 What is Meaning 2

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Critical Essay about Meaning


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What is meaning? What is meant by a word, text, concept, or action is the

answer given by Google. We could ask ourselves the question, why are we living at

the very moment and you are questioning the meaning of your life and questioning

the purpose of our existence. This is similar to what is meaning, which is the purpose

of something whether a word or speech or something intangible, our life. In order to

answer meaning, we need to look back to ourselves. How do we define something andin what situation we are to define something to give it a meaning. A traffic light

working on a junction of the street might provide no meaning at all to a person who is

color blind but the traffic light serve the purpose to provide order and flow to the

traffic for people who sees it. Everything and everyone that revolves in our daily life

has a meaning and if it does not mean anything to you at all but it does provide

meaning to someone else. The meaning of meaning could be an intention. Like the

example given above, the traffic light intends to provide the road user safety and order

to reach their destination. Ultimately, the meaning of meaning is the purpose or the

intention of something or someone regardless if we see it or not.

As a person, what do we need to experience meaning in life? Baumeister andWilson (1996) mentioned that in order for us to regard our lives as sufficiently

meaningful, we need to satisfy the need for purpose, value and justification, efficacy

and the need for self-worth. In my opinion, I agree that we need to have a purpose in

our life to experience the meaning in life. Mentioned earlier, the meaning of meaning

is the purpose or the intention of something or someone and for our life to mean

something, we too need a purpose in our lives to fully justify our life as purposeful or

meaningful. Each and every one of us serves a specific or a range of purpose in this

world regardless it is to continue the familys name to help someone or to change the

society.

However, most important of all is that did we identify the purpose and live on

with the purpose in mind? Ask yourself this question what are you living for now?

Sometime people would think they are lifeless and meaningless because they deviated

from their sole purpose of living thus they have nothing to live for and this decrease

their meaning of life. For example, what is the purpose of a musicians life? He or she

might tell you that he or she is currently writing an amazing song or composing

orchestra music that would make audience feel how they feel or to convey certain

message and so on he or she continue to make music and they are clear on their

pathway. Lee Chong Wei, Malaysians badminton player, played so hard against rival

during the recent Olympics as he knows that the purpose he has to give his best is

because Malaysias name is on his shoulder and he want to bring the country its firstgold medal hence with his purpose on life, he touches many fellow Malaysians heart

(Baumeister & Wilson, 1996)and even gives others purpose of doing something for

example badminton players dreamed of being like Lee Chong Wei and they continue

to practice hard hence having a purpose of life already.

We have identified the needs that we need to fulfill to experience the meaning

in life but how can we enhance the experience of meaning in life? To entirely

experience the meaning of life, not only we must have to seek the internal sense of

needs, we also have to discover the external things we need to compliment into our

life to allow us to truly enhance the experience of meaning in life (Stillman, Lambert,

Fincham, & Baumeister, 2010). Past research mentioned that external factor fromoneself which is building interpersonal relationship also could add flavors to meaning


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in life. I feel that having a bond, a relationship and association to someone is an

important driver for a person, which can act like catalyst or enhancement to meaning

for a persons life.

From a more simpler prospective, How could I type in English when I do not

meet my English teacher during my schooling period? Having an association to myteacher allows me to interact with my world more with the lesson I learnt and thus

adding more flavors to my life hence increasing the meaning in my life. Forming

interpersonal relationship along our lives helps us in defining the meaning of our

lives. The first interpersonal relationships we form in our lives are with our parents.

They provide us with our necessity and thus our life began shaping. Parents provide

us with moral education, ethics and value and justification. From then onwards our

lifes meaning are form and based on our parents teachings. When we grow bigger

and attend school, we approach our second interpersonal relationship we meet our

friends. Friends are an important enhancement of meaning in life. We interact with

many friends, there are some who stayed and they are some who left. With friends,

we learn how to work in groups, how to socialize and how to see things in a differentpersons prospective. All of these make up pieces and puzzle of who we are today and

how we interact with the world now hence giving our life interaction with meaning of

our lives.

Forming interpersonal relationship is not only important for us to experience

meaning in our lives, the lack of interpersonal relationship also cause one self to lose

track of all socially mediated meanings, purposes and value (Stillman, Baumeister,

Lambert, Crescioni, Dewall, & Fincham, 2009). Stillman and friends (2009) also

mentioned that social inclusion also cause a global reduction in the perception of life

as meaningful. People who are socially weak tend to find the problem of them

socializing as a problem in their life thus reducing the meaningful part of their life to

shine and this is a rolling effect and it does affect ones life dramatically which in turn

curb the experience of meaning in life.

In order to enhance my experience of meaning in life, I would first be myself

and believe in myself. Being what other people want you to be diminish our meaning

of life as we are there to please others but not ourselves. Being ourselves is to really

be comfortable in our daily life and when we are in our most comfortable form, we

feel confident to engage in activities and peoples. We do not live to please others but

we also do not live to hurt others. We have to remember that being ourselves does not

mean we have to neglect the negative side of ourselves but to believe in our ownjudgments and self-efficacy in accordance to socially acceptable moral code and do

not in anyway our action hurts others mentally or physically. In this way, we could

have our life planned out and experience a better quality of meaning in life.

To enhance our experience of meaning in life, we also could get ourselves

occupied either with hobbies or social work or any beneficial activities. With

something to hold onto in our lives, not only it can distract us from all the negativity,

it can also let us improve in every aspect of our lives. When we are occupied with

some activities, we are also having a purpose in life. Let say we are engaged with a

sport, it can help to build our physical health and keep our mind active leaving no

space of other negativity and hence enhance positivity in building meanings in ourlives.


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Works Cited

Baumeister, R. F., & Wilson, B. (1996). Life Stories and the Four Needs for

Meaning. Psychology Inquiry, 7(4), 322-377.

Stillman, T. F., Baumeister, R. F., Lambert, N. M., Crescioni, A. W., Dewall, C. N., &

Fincham, F. D. (2009). Alone and Without Purpose: Life Loses Meaning Following

Social Exclusion.J Exp Soc Psychol, 45(4), 686-694.

Stillman, T. F., Lambert, N. M., Fincham, F. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2010). Meaning

as Magnetic Force: Evidence That Meaning in Life Promotes Interpersonal

Appeal. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1-8.

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