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Are you still hoping to make this year more meaningful? Well, stop hoping and pay attention. I know the secret to meaning and here it is: Relationships create meaning. There can be no meaning without relationships.
Do you want me to be objective about this? Objects on their own and in isolation have no meaning. Any meaning results from the relationships between objects. For example, the new gadget you got for Christmas has no meaning... until you interact with it. Until you relate with it. Until you use it.
Life only makes sense to us through our relationships. Our relationships to anything and everything. However, it is our relationship with people that really matters. Because we don’t simply relate to people; we interact with people. As Carl Jung, the consequential psychologist, explained, “We need other people to be truly ourselves.”
The secret to meaning is to be part of, not apart from. Your new gadget or social media page just won’t do, neither will email nor instant messaging. So stop allowing tools and toys to isolate you from real, live people.
Get out there and relate. In person.
(Is this a call to get back to the office? That depends on whether you can be objective enough to survive the subjectivity of in-person relationships.)
Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.
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Who triggered this idea?
John Fowles.
"That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationship between objects. Whether the objects need each other, love each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women – and absurd." The Magus by John Fowles
The Secret to Still Making This a More Meaningful Year
The John Fowles quote adds to this piece, but even without it, you have composed a wonderful reminder of what is valuable in our lives, or what may be missing. Thank you.