In the Comma Club, we talk a lot about how important it is to know and deeply understand your own highest values. They help you prioritize and plan, and they are particularly valuable in untangling the complex process of setting a course in life. They are artifacts of the meaning we have made in our lives, and the stars to navigate by.
I’ve been in a strange new place in life the last few months. I’ve been reflecting and working through a lot. I’m feeling energy to do something and exploring what exactly it is I want to do. This has brought me to realize a lot about how important meaning is for motivating and directing your energy. And how intentional you have to be about making meaning once you’ve reached a point in life where you don’t really have to do anything you don’t want to.
The more I explored the theme, the more excited I was to share my thoughts with you. Here’s a deep dive into everything that’s important to know about making meaning as an intentional, ongoing process.
At first, it’s someone else’s job
For the first part of our lives, you don't need those stars so much. You have plenty of direction to follow. You have structure and rules and obligations, and the rest of it is free time—time between things other people have set up for you to do, things you have to do, things you're supposed to do. "Free time" is the default mode for kids before they're old enough to recognize the patterns and live by the calendar and clock. For many people, life when you're young is free time interrupted by things that just come to you: school, meals, playdates, birthday parties. For adults, free time is a reprieve, a break from responsibilities and obligations, a moment between being where others need you to be and doing what needs to be done, between working, taking care of the house, caring for partners, kids, pets, and oneself.
But that runs out. The character of that free time has changed. One day, you feel in that free time the absence of something. Something should be there. It's not just missing structure or "something to do." You know this because just being busy doesn't make it go away. In fact, sometimes you feel that absence while you’re going about your routine. You’re perfectly occupied, perfectly busy, but something is missing. It’s not a simple want; there’s a deeper feeling of something missing that you don't know how to get.
What’s missing?
What you're feeling the lack of in those moments is meaning. "Meaning" is such a common word, but it stands for something powerful in the sense I'm using it here. It doesn't have to be some grand purpose. I’m not talking about "the point of your life"—as if there is a single point to anyone’s life. Meaning is a daily need like water, food, rest, and shelter.
So what is it? Meaning comes from knowing you're connected to the world in a way that proves over time to be worthwhile to you personally. Often, you sense it later, when you’re looking back to realize how good it feels to have built a home and family, to have spent so long with a partner, to have made a significant or lasting impact in the world somewhere. Sometimes it comes in recognizing that nurturing your curiosities, interests, and passions has paid off, that these pursuits have made the universe a richer place for you, given you real and lasting understanding of the world, people, and your place in relation to it all.
Meaning was always necessary, but for a long time, it was supplied to us. And because it all seemed to arise naturally, you might not have felt like you had a choice: You “had to” do school, you “had to” have a job. When you have a family, you “have to” take care of them. In other articles, we’ve talked about some of the limits to this. We might agree, for instance, that you “have to” be present with your loved ones. But realistically, many of us learn the hard way that not only is there nothing forcing us to do that, we have to find the energy and motivation to do it, and have the awareness that we aren’t doing it in the first place.
Millionaires don’t “have to” do anything
And this is where you begin to see the paradigm shift. You run out of “have-tos” at some point. Even for things you want, even for things you know are important, there comes a time in life when you have to do things by choice. Because no one else can do it for us. Finding meaning is one of these things.
And it’s the direct key to finding motivation beyond a certain phase of life. Because, as we run out of “have-tos”—at any age—we become more parsimonious with our energy. We don’t get up and do what we don’t believe is meaningful.
This is the heart of the “miserable millionaire” phenomenon: when you don’t “have to” do anything, the energy to care about or enjoy anything doesn’t volunteer itself like it did when you were still grinding.
So it’s important to intentionally, mindfully consider the enormous difference between what is meaningful and motivating, and what you “have to” do .
The Big Handoff
What doesn’t come with success but does become clearer as you age is that, when there are no more adults to hand it to you, when there are no more roles that force it into your days, the job becomes yours and yours alone. And no one tells you how to do it.
That handoff—from a life where meaning is given, to one where meaning must be made—is one of the most subtle and significant transitions in life. And it doesn't arrive on a schedule. For some, it comes young, even as teenagers or 20-somethings, especially in creative pursuits. Sometimes the creativity itself is the meaning; sometimes it's simply a path to self-understanding that leads to meaning elsewhere. For others, it doesn't arrive until 40 or later, when you have more agency and perspective. And for many, it doesn't arrive until retirement, when the structure of work falls away and you're left with yourself.
At some point—after the children are grown, or work no longer dominates, or the household steadies—you may find that the roles and routines that once carried so much meaning don't feel as full as they used to. There's nothing wrong, exactly. But there's a new kind of quiet. If you listen close, you’ll hear in the quiet that the "why" behind your days depends all on you now.
Success does not prepare you
That's when the harder work begins—not of doing more, but of listening more closely. Most of us were taught how to stay busy, how to achieve, how to fulfill expectations. Very few were taught how to pay attention inwardly, how to notice the stirrings of curiosity or longing, how to treat those stirrings as signals instead of distractions. Or to value them at all. Much of life has taught us to focus on goals and ignore these feelings, and that is something to unlearn.
For some, finding sources of meaning involves circling back to what was once set aside: an interest, a calling, a part of yourself that never had space to grow in the past. Sometimes it begins with a faint tug in a direction you can't quite name. When this is the case, many of us have to unlearn the habit of dismissing our subtle, less goal-directed thoughts and feelings. To be successful, we’ve taught ourselves to focus on outer guidance and outer signs. Now it’s time to learn to detect and trust your own inner guidance.
Many sources—and the journey itself
Sometimes this leads to creativity—making, writing, designing, building. Sometimes it's relationships, or service, or new learning. Sometimes it's the Big Questions: What is this all for? Where do I belong in it? Meaning doesn't always come from answers. In fact, as a lifetime practice, meaning comes mostly from engaged commitment to the act of searching itself, from the willingness to follow small sparks where they lead.
The risk of resenting the tried and true
This search can take many forms—like learning, creativity, relationships, service, or spirituality. As we start to look for new sources of meaning, we may begin to resent or distrust the sources we’ve heavily relied on to this point. People devoted to religion might experience a crisis of faith that is really a deeper hunger for more. Not necessarily more religious study or more time in church, but a broader, more practical perspective on life than what doctrine alone provides.
The same thing is true in marriages: what may feel like an inevitable divorce may just be proof that you’re relying on it for more meaning in your life than it can bear. We’re not meant to have as few close friends and companions as we often do in the modern world. Kurt Vonnegut, speaking to the village-life roots of humanity, said that all arguments in a marriage are really one or both partners saying, “you’re not enough people.” As we get older, our need for connection gets stronger. A marriage can’t do more than it can do, especially as the house begins to empty out.
I say all this to illustrate that finding meaning doesn’t always have to entail a drastic reckoning and upheaval. Now, sometimes it really is time for a big change in terms of your approach to life, your habits, or your beliefs. Sometimes people have an authentic, soulful need to do big things: move across the country, sell their company and simplify their lives, get a divorce, adopt a kid. All sorts of huge moves can be exactly what a person really wants and needs to do.
But, if it’s authentic, usually that clarity comes after you’ve already found and connected to a new source meaning. You get into trouble when you hope a drastic change will bring meaning. It’ll bring energy, but not necessarily meaning.
Creating meaning as a source of meaning
Sources of meaning change. If they didn’t, this would all be simpler. But what mattered at 25 may not matter at 55. What matters at 55 may shift again at 75. The point isn't to hold onto one source forever, but to keep returning to the question: Where is my meaning now? What is asking to be lived through me?
And that is the heart of it: sources come and go, but the responsibility to cultivate them is always yours. And the pleasure. Because meaning is no longer supplied from the outside. It's something you learn to create for yourself. And the practice of creating it—over and over, in different ways, in different seasons—can become the most reliable compass you have for a meaningful life.
Cheers,
Dave