Essay 5 - Meaning as Emotion

Have you ever referred to a relationship with another person as “meaningful”? Or perhaps you have traveled to a historic site or a place of breathtaking beauty and referred to the trip as “meaningful”? We could go on. Perhaps you saw a play or listened to a piece of music which you described as “meaningful”. If someone asks you – “what do you mean by that?” You might reply “I don’t know, it just felt meaningful”.

In these cases, you are referring to a feeling or emotion that we call meaning. What does that emotion feel like? It is hard to describe emotions, but I would venture to say that it is a feeling that things make sense perhaps at a deeper level although you would be hard-pressed to explain why.

This is different from the content, or the inference and you could even think of it as a reaction to the content as interpreted via a point of reference. Consider a couple of examples. Let us say that you visited the pyramids and found it to be a very meaningful trip because the size and age of these structures seemed to put your life and its small problems into perspective.  In this case, the content of the experience would be the trip to Egypt. The reference would be the vast amount of time that these structures have sat there waiting for you to view them. Or the reference might be the astonishing things that primitive people could accomplish when organized with a specific purpose in mind. The emotion would be how you felt viewing these structures through one of these lenses.

Here is another example. Let us say you decided to hike a particularly challenging trail that provided breathtaking scenic overlooks along the way. Reflecting upon it later you observed that it was a very meaningful experience. When asked why, you would probably respond “I don’t know why, it just was”. If pressed you might reflect on the content (the actual elements and challenges of the hike) interpreted through some reference model (such as man against the elements or personal growth through challenges or proving your worth). You might then decide one of those interpretations resonated with your original feelings of meaning. And, as a result of the meaning you experienced, somehow, it feels like the world makes a little bit more sense.

So, we have three ways to think about meaning: content, inference, and emotion. How can we bring these three together to explain the meaning of life?

This essay is 425 words long and the audio is just over 3 minutes.