Case Study - Finding Meaning

Finding Meaning: living life in relationship to death.

"I'm so frustrated to realize that now, at 63, I'm looking back on my life and wondering what it was all for!", said Dave. 

"What's prompting this angst, Dave?", I asked.  Dave was a new client--sent by his wife because she suspected he was depressed.  Though early in his retirement, he'd become irritable and anxious at the very time that she thought he would finally be able to relax and enjoy life a bit more.

"It's hard to put my finger on, Ann.  I was so committed to my work, making money and climbing the corporate ladder for so long--that I never even questioned that this was what was truly the most important thing in life.  But now that I've had time to look back--I can't help but question whether or not most of it was just a complete waste of time. Tons of meetings, flying all over the country for urgent events, planning the next project that was going to make us all so much more money--what was the point?  It didn't add much to the world--and it kept me so busy I couldn't even see what was important."

"So, Dave---with this time to slow down, what's been happening for you to question this?"

"Well, I started volunteering with kids.  These are great kids but they start out with everything against them. Their families are poor, they've got few advantages---and I know many of them will never get a chance to get out of these circumstances.  At the same time, these kids have so much spirit and love inside themselves.  I just want to see them get a chance and it woke something up inside me.  As I was realizing this--I also realized that with a rare exception, my whole work career never sparked this much excitement.  I'm alive for the first time in my life and yet, I'm looking back on my earlier, supposedly so successful life and now it looks like a waste.  I can't figure out how to reconcile it without getting depressed!"

I said, "Be glad you're awake now Dave.  You're waking up to the "finding meaning piece" of your life and you've still got time to put it into action! Let's work together--explore all 16 core areas of your Life Puzzle.  You'll likely discover that you've got more there than you're givingy yourself credit for--but yes, you'll discover what's missing too.  Filling in these other areas--building the whole is possible.  You likely have another twenty years of life left--now, live them consciously and in the process you'll create a life with meaning. We all die Dave--but you've discovered that you have to consciously live and create the whole--and in the process finding meaning is filled in!