Description
What is the one basic need we all have as humans? We might think of water, food, relationships, which are all important of course. But studies have shown that a fundamental need we all have at every stage of life is the need for meaning. In one way or another we all search to make sense of our lives. Knowing why we exists makes everything else in life make sense. The opposite is true, without a sense of meaning and purpose life doesn’t make sense and doesn’t seem worth living. So in this episode we want to discuss how we rediscover meaning during the latter stages of life.
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Video Script
Episode 9 Intro: The Basic Human Need
What is the one basic need we all have as humans? We might think of water, food, relationships, which are all important of course. But studies have shown that a fundamental need we all have at every stage of life is the need for meaning. In one way or another we all search to make sense of our lives. Knowing why we exists makes everything else in life make sense. The opposite is true, without a sense of meaning and purpose life doesn’t make sense and doesn’t seem worth living. So in this episode we want to discuss how we rediscover meaning during the latter stages of life.
The Need for Meaning
Well in our journey together we have already covered some important areas of finishing our race. If you recall, in the first three episodes we looked at an overview of the stages of life and then in the last five episodes we discussed some of the barriers or obstacles that can trip us up and hinder us from finishing the calling that God has on our lives. If you have not had the chance to listen to these, it might be helpful to do that before we continue.
We are now at the top of page 33 in our workbook. In this third Section, we want to focus on some of the basic needs we all have as we run the last lap of our lives on this earth. We’ll discuss issues such as hope, our spiritual life, our priorities and our relationships. But in this episode we will begin with the fundamental need we have for meaning.
Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychologist before the Second World War and became a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. In his book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” he tried to objectively reflect on his experiences in the camps from a professional perspective. This led him to several conclusions regarding how having meaning in our lives is directly connected to our will to live – even in the most extreme of conditions. While his conclusions came from the crucible of the death camps, there are applicable in each of our lives.
His main conclusion was that our search for meaning is the primary motivation of our lives. Once we know WHY we are living, then it is possible to endure the HOW of our living. Regardless of how hopeless our daily life may seem, if we can find some sort of meaning, it becomes bearable. Those that actually survived the death camps were those who knew there was something waiting for them to fulfill on the outside. This may have been something real awaiting them or it may have just been something they had contrived that they would do AFTER they got out.
In his case, when he arrived the guards had taken a manuscript he had been working on. Over the next years, he rewrote this manuscript in his head, with the purpose of finishing it when he survived the death camps. This meaning kept him alive on many death marches, where others who had nothing to live for quickly succumbed to death. He noticed this principle working even if the hope that someone had for the future was somewhat unrealistic or only loosely based in reality.
Healthy Stress and Tension
Having some sort of ideal of a potential future is what enabled prisoners live through the harshest of conditions and it also gave meaning to those who made the choice to die for their ideals. I also found his thoughts on mental health interesting. He states that mental health is based upon the tension between what we have achieved and what we have yet to achieve. Mental health is not the result of eliminating all stress or tension. Not having the tension of future achievements or goals is actually detrimental to our mental health.
In other words, trying to eliminate all tension and stress in life does not necessarily result in mental health and is actually rather unrealistic. The struggle to achieve a worthwhile goal, which is freely chosen by the individual is what makes us healthy. Health is not necessarily a result of lack of pressure or stress. Of course the key is that it is a goal that is freely chosen and not something forced upon us. As a believer this can be described as our response to God’s call and purpose on our life. This is what gives meaning to our lives. As he saw in the camps, meaning had very little to do with a person’s current circumstances. It had much more to do with something on the inside, the narrative that they told themselves.
Again, this narrative has real power as it is rooted in our understanding of God’s plan for our lives. This is why boredom and lack of purpose, particularly as we age, leads to problems such as a lack of mental and spiritual health, which can even lead to a deterioration of our physical health. We need a purpose even during the latter stages of our lives, which – as Frankl puts it – require s a certain tension between where we are at and having a task or calling yet to fulfill.
Before we continue perhaps it would be helpful to reflect upon our own lives.
Do you have a specific (not general) meaning to your life, a reason to finish your race? What do you live for? What is your purpose?
Meaning Discovered in Calling
As followers of Jesus, we understand that this true meaning of life is discovered from God and his calling in our lives, it’s not just about our own self-actualization, or fulfilling our own dreams. It is not really about “self” at all. In reality, our needs are met only as we seek His Kingdom first and follow him. As Jesus taught in Matthew 6 “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt. 6:33) “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)
Even in the latter stages of Paul’s life journey, we see his sense of purpose, “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” Acts 20:22-24
Though it may not seem to be on a grand biblical stage as the Apostle, or as dramatic as living in the death camps, we all do need some kind of meaning to give purpose to our lives. Of course as we age this may adapt and change, but if we get to the point that life has no meaning than we will not see any point in living. I remember listening to my father, who was in his nineties at the time, describe the meaning he got from going to the nursing home and helping transport, what he called “older people” in their wheelchairs. Helping them provided meaning for his life. We all need some sort of meaning.
As I mentioned previously, our lives can also have meaning in the face of suffering. As we change our attitude towards our own suffering, like Joseph, even the events in life that did not go as we thought they would or should can have meaning. Paul understood this and wrote in Romans that if we share in His suffering we also will share in his glory and that his present sufferings were nothing compared to the glory that will one day be revealed (Rom. 8:17-18). After all nothing can separate us from God’s love (Rom. 8:31-39).
Paul even takes it one step further in 2 Cor. 12 when he says, “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:10). As I admitted in a previous episode, I am not sure I am at Paul’s level yet where I can say I “delight” in hardships and difficulties, but I have lived long enough to gain perspective on the events of life, even the bad ones, to see how God was working in the background all along. Before I could see what he was doing, he was working through my weakness. This perspective is what gives us real meaning in our lives and hope for the future.
While we do not need suffering to have meaning in life, meaning is possible in spite of suffering. It seems God allows this in order to test us and prove our calling. Our approach to challenges will shape the meaning we have in our lives.
A Divine Perspective
Actually, I don’t know how people who do not have this divine eternal perspective have meaning in their lives. Without the Lord, the inconsistencies and inexplicable circumstances of life would leave me disillusioned and without hope. Yet as long as we have a meaning and purpose in life we will be able and willing to endure suffering. Without this, however, struggles will have no meaning and people usually will give up the desire to live. This was Frankl’s experience from the concentration camps.
While meaning in life is more than what we do, studies have shown how being unemployed for lengths of time can cause someone to lose the meaning of their life and have nothing to live for. Being jobless is equated with being useless and uselessness as having no meaning in life. This is likely why the rather recent phenomena of retirement from all work – about the last 100 years or so in the West –is so detrimental to many who turn 65. While we may take advantage of a pension to begin to be engaged in other forms of service, to just do nothing has proven to be rather unhealthy in the long run.
Os Guinness has written that we “can never retire from calling. We get our value by having responsibility. We need to keep a connection between what we do before and after we retire. A career is what we are paid to do and a calling is what we were made to do.” Your career may not be totally transferable, but as a believer we have a calling to use our gifts and abilities to be of Kingdom service well into our 70s and 80s.
Even those who have been serving others in ministry their whole lives, who then quit all such meaningful activity at a predetermined age, usually don’t finish the race well. This often leads to a lack of meaning and purpose, depression and other illnesses. Though our level of involvement and our role in ministry may change, it is important for us to find ways to give to others, to serve them with our gifts regardless of our age.
Is Retirement Biblical?
Retirement is only mentioned once in the Scripture. In Numbers 8:24-26 the Levites who served in the temple were to retire at fifty years of age, but not retire to do nothing, rather to continue to be engaged in training others more like a coach or mentor to the younger priests. Like them, our role and scope may change, but we all need meaning in life until our last breath.
Achieving personal meaning only occurs as we give ourselves to others or to a cause bigger than ourselves, what we could call our calling. This is why it is important to not give up too early. Many things have been done throughout history by those in their older age. Kentucky Fried Chicken was not even invented until Colonel Sanders was 67! We may have to adjust what we do and the pace we do it, but we don’t have to stop serving God and others with our gifts and abilities. (1 Peter 4:11; Gal. 6:10)
The danger is to lose our sense of importance and value as we age. This is particularly likely in societies that increasingly value youth over their elders. This is why many in their latter years find their joy and meaning in life waning. They cease to have value in their society and community. But God has promised to give us purpose and strength for as many days as he has appointed for us. The Psalmist writes of the righteous that “they will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green.” (Psa. 92:12-14). Of course, this is for those who remain planted in Him and connected to his purposes in their lives.
Isaiah writes, “Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” (Isa 46:4) The grayer I get the more I am liking this verse! God still has a plan and purpose for me and for you. He wants to continue to give meaning to our lives as long as he gives us breath. My prayer, like that of the Psalmist’s is that, “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come. “ (Psa. 71:18) The fact is that God often saves the best for last.
As we conclude this episode let’s take some time to consider:
Have you lost the real meaning of why you exist? Have you been tempted to stop too soon? Why not spend some time considering how God could use your lifetime of experience, your gift and abilities to serve others.
Well I was hoping to have time this episode to look at two key Commissions and two key Commandments from Scripture that can help focus our energies in the final third of our productive lives, but unfortunately time got away from us. So next time we will begin by discussing these as well as then considering how we can regain renewed hope in our lives. I am looking forward to it and hope you’ll join me.