We had only known each oth­er for half an hour or so, but I felt like Sebas­t­ian was ready for a more sub­stan­tial ques­tion. I’d endured the nec­es­sary small-talk (we’d both agreed the rain was depress­ing) and I felt it was final­ly social­ly appro­pri­ate to delve deeper.

“Sebas­t­ian,” I asked, lean­ing for­ward, ​“This may seem like a strange ques­tion, but what is the first thing that comes to your mind when I ask you about a mean­ing­ful moment from your last year?”

He looked a bit shocked, but he pursed his lips and thought about it. Inward­ly I cheered. These are the kinds of ques­tions I am most drawn to. For a long time, I have been delv­ing a lit­tle too deep on first dates and at Christ­mas par­ties. The reac­tions vary. Some­times peo­ple take me seri­ous­ly and we make a unique con­nec­tion. Oth­er times they just awk­ward­ly back away.

On very rare occa­sions they turn the ques­tion around, which is what Sebas­t­ian did.

“Okay,” he said. ​“I think I got one. But I want to hear one of your mean­ing­ful moments first.”

I had to think. This par­tic­u­lar ques­tion is one of my favourites and even though I reg­u­lar­ly ask it, I had no ready answer myself. Per­haps that is because mean­ing­ful moments come and go and our feel­ings about what is or isn’t mean­ing­ful are always chang­ing. After a moment I decid­ed to tell him about the first time I asked myself this ques­tion and what hap­pened as a result.

Some­thing worthwhile…

All my life I have want­ed to do some­thing worth­while. In pur­suit of this, I end­ed up work­ing on a hos­pi­tal ship in Africa for two years. We were doing amaz­ing, life-sav­ing, work. I was final­ly doing some­thing meaningful.

That is until one after­noon, when I was down in the hos­pi­tal wards, play­ing UNO with a kid whose face had been eat­en away by a flesh-melt­ing bac­te­ria (he was due for a brand new nose the next day). I played my last card, win­ning for the umpteenth time, and real­ized that I was not enjoy­ing what I was doing. 

I wasn’t enjoy­ing UNO or help­ing these kids, or bring­ing hope and heal­ing. The quin­tes­sen­tial mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ence — vol­un­teer­ing abroad — was not bring­ing me any great feel­ings of mean­ing. What was I doing wrong? Where were the ful­fill­ing moments? 

One clear thought came to mind. Once a week I facil­i­tat­ed a group dis­cus­sion on the ship where the young men on board gath­ered to talk. Sure, we dis­cussed our days, the work we were doing and who we had a crush on. But we also dis­cussed our fears, our anx­i­eties, doubts and dreams. We were vul­ner­a­ble and sup­port­ive and these talks gave us the encour­age­ment we need­ed to get through the often demand­ing work. We were able to do our jobs bet­ter, which helped the entire ship. In a very real way, this week­ly meet­ing was a lot more worth­while than my evening card game. Any­body could go to the wards and dom­i­nate at UNO; not every­one can (or wants to) facil­i­tate a heart-to-heart with a bunch of guys on a hos­pi­tal ship.

The real­iza­tion was a pow­er­ful one. I had found some­thing that felt worth­while and mean­ing­ful and it was lead­ing me in a new direc­tion. Soon a friend of mine was run­ning a sim­i­lar group for the young women on board. I was help­ing peo­ple, just not in the way I had expect­ed. And that is what led me to what I’m doing now — writ­ing about self-improvement. 

I fin­ished my sto­ry and sat back. Sebas­t­ian had been nod­ding along, lis­ten­ing intently.

“I don’t think mine is so excit­ing,” he said. ​“I got to fly home and see my mom at Christ­mas. She was very sick. But she is feel­ing bet­ter now.” He glanced at his watch. ​“I’m sor­ry, but I have to get back to work.” His office was right around the cor­ner, a repet­i­tive, but sta­ble job that required him to live thou­sands of miles away from his fam­i­ly — the source of his most mean­ing­ful moment.

I nod­ded. I had to get going too. My shift start­ed in a few hours. A shift at a job that was as far removed from writ­ing as you could get.

And that moment led to a new ques­tion: If it was so easy for us both to think of mean­ing­ful moments, why were we not liv­ing them? What are we sup­posed to do when our jobs are so dis­con­nect­ed from what real­ly mat­ters to us?

What is mean­ing­ful for you?

“My grand­son inter­viewed me the oth­er day… he came up with all the ques­tions him­self! Can you believe we talked for three hours?”

“Get­ting mar­ried, for sure.”

“I curate a mes­sage board for sui­ci­dal youth. Two months ago I called one of the kids after a weird con­ver­sa­tion we’d had. He lat­er told me he was going to kill him­self that night. If I didn’t go on those mes­sage boards every day he would be dead right now.”

“When my son was born!”

Every­one has a dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tion of mean­ing­ful. But it seems to me there are com­mon threads in people’s answers to the ques­tion above; we find mean­ing in con­nect­ing with peo­ple we love, in learn­ing new things, achiev­ing goals, fac­ing our fears. We have all expe­ri­enced moments that are deep­er and more sat­is­fy­ing than sim­ple day-to-day plea­sures, deci­sions and actions that felt pro­found­ly worth­while. These are the things that mat­ter, the moments that peo­ple on their deathbed smile about. 

But what about the rest of it all? What about all the hours we give to our jobs and work­places? Do they mat­ter? I have sel­dom had some­one answer that ​‘mean­ing­ful moment’ ques­tion with a sto­ry about their job. And when they do, it sounds more like this:

“Oh my god, I just got back from the Con­go. I vol­un­teered as a nurse for six months in the bush. Most of those peo­ple had nev­er seen a doctor!”

“I vol­un­teer three times a week down­town at the nee­dle clin­ic. We pre­vent­ed four over­dos­es this week alone.”

“We final­ly raised enough mon­ey to build the school in Mozam­bique. I’ll be fly­ing there next month to super­vise the dig­ging of the well.”

There is no doubt these expe­ri­ences were mean­ing­ful, but most of us aren’t vol­un­teer­ing abroad or sav­ing people’s lives. Is it pos­si­ble for the nor­mal jobs that the rest of us have to be meaningful?

This ques­tion has been haunt­ing me late­ly. Over the past few years, I have watched more and more of my friends aban­don their dreams and take jobs that seem com­plete­ly ran­dom — jobs that I’m sure would make me mis­er­able. Will they be able to live a mean­ing­ful and ful­filled life when they spend eight hours of their day doing some­thing their past selves would have scoffed at?

The why

The truth is that there are many thank­less jobs out there. We can’t all work with­in our pas­sions; only a few of us even get close. Luck­i­ly, the Inter­net is full of arti­cles with tips and hacks to help make our ​‘nor­mal’ jobs more mean­ing­ful. So then why aren’t we ful­filled when we come home in the evening? Are we doing some­thing wrong?

Before I explore that ques­tion, let me pose one more: Why haven’t you quit your job?

“Because I love it.”

“It’s got a great pen­sion. Plus I get 3 months off every summer.”

“Mon­ey. I’ve got bills to pay.”

“Stu­dent loans.”

“Man, I got mar­ried two months ago and we just bought a house. Why do you think I can’t quit?”

For most of us, the rea­son why we work is sim­ple — we need mon­ey. The Ger­man philoso­pher Friedrich Niet­zsche summed up a lot of human exis­tence when he said: ​“If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how.” Per­haps the mod­ern equiv­a­lent would be: ​“He who has to pay bills can bear with almost any job.” Only once we’ve paid the bills can we can start sav­ing up to trav­el, or buy our kid new shoes, or invest in fan­cy oil paints so we can final­ly fin­ish the mas­ter­piece col­lect­ing dust in our closet.

Niet­zsche nailed it. We don’t quit our jobs because we need mon­ey. Sim­ple! Prob­lem solved. Nor­mal jobs are mean­ing­ful because they allow us to sur­vive in this mod­ern cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety. If we didn’t have to make mon­ey there would be no rea­son to get up in the morning!

I hope you can sense my sar­casm. Because it only takes a few prob­ing ques­tions to real­ize that this the­o­ry doesn’t hold up to much scruti­ny. For most of us, mon­ey in and of itself is not our true why. We work nor­mal jobs, endur­ing all sorts of hows, in order to make mon­ey that allows us to do or have or be some­thing. What­ev­er this some­thing is, it is big­ger than mon­ey and more mean­ing­ful, even if we can’t see it right away.

The how

Meet my friend Jason. He recent­ly took a job as an elec­tri­cal engi­neer with the city. This is not what his six years of Uni­ver­si­ty pre­pared him for, but he decid­ed that being an Eng­lish Pro­fes­sor was not the path for him. Since he seemed to be pret­ty con­tent with his new how, I want­ed to hear more about his why.

“Even­tu­al­ly you real­ize that you’d rather make the peo­ple you love be hap­py.” His voice was calm and thought­ful. ​“It’s still sort of self­ish though. This job gives me great vaca­tion time, I can work on my hob­bies, and I have the free­dom to be with my fam­i­ly.” The word sparked some­thing in his voice. ​“Free­dom. I think that’s what it’s about. I now have a lot of freedom.”

I wasn’t con­vinced. ​“But isn’t tak­ing a dif­fer­ent job the oppo­site of free­dom? Aren’t you now forced to dis­re­gard your degree and take this less desir­able job in order to pro­vide for your family?”

“Not at all,” He shook his head. ​“I chose to do this so that I can pro­vide for my fam­i­ly. Now I can work towards the life I want to live — my wife, a gar­den, lots of books. If I had become pro­fes­sor things would look very dif­fer­ent. Sure, I love lit­er­a­ture, but first I’d have to do anoth­er four years of school, at least two of those in anoth­er city away, which would mean being away from my wife. Plus, the last thing I want to do after a long day at school is read more books. I wor­ried that a career as a pro­fes­sor might have killed my love of lit­er­a­ture! No, this city job is way better.”

Jason’s why clear­ly isn’t mon­ey. He didn’t men­tion salary or income at all. Instead, he works so that he can bet­ter enjoy his mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships and activ­i­ties. With his goal clear­ly in sight, he is able to enjoy (or at least tol­er­ate) a job that the Jason I knew in high school would have mocked. So what is the why behind your how?

The things that matter

For some of you, the answer to that ques­tion will be clear (or at least more clear than it was 10 min­utes ago). Hope­ful­ly, this remind­ed you of your why or inspired you to think about the impor­tance of your fam­i­ly, hob­bies, and goals for your future. These things are impor­tant and thus the means of achiev­ing them are impor­tant too.

So do the jobs we do mat­ter? Yes! Or… No! Or… Maybe?

If for some, the answer is still not clear, I think the prob­lem is that our why and our how are so far apart they don’t even appear on the same map. This cre­ates a gap into which dis­sat­is­fac­tion and cyn­i­cism can creep. 

So, for the rest of us whose jobs do not seem to be mov­ing us any clos­er to the mean­ing­ful aspects of our lives, we return to Niet­zsche and his idea of being able to get along with almost any how if we have our own why. I first came across this idea in Vic­tor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Mean­ing which I read short­ly after return­ing from the hos­pi­tal ship in Africa.

Fran­kl, a psy­chi­a­trist, author, and Holo­caust sur­vivor, used his expe­ri­ences in Auschwitz as a way to expose the need for pur­pose in life. He claimed you could always tell when anoth­er pris­on­er had lost their why; they would smoke their last cig­a­rettes (which were invalu­able trad­ing items) pre­fer­ring sim­ply to enjoy their final few hours. Usu­al­ly, they were dead by morn­ing. It would look like Typhus or some oth­er dis­ease, but every­one around them would have seen it coming.

“A per­son who has lost faith for the future — for his future — was doomed.”

Frankl’s own faith for the future was tied up in a desire to Write a book — a Holo­caust account which would dou­ble as the intro­duc­tion to a new the­o­ry of psy­chi­a­try called Logother­a­py. He claimed it was plan­ning this man­u­script that kept him alive through those hor­rid years. Because of his unique expe­ri­ence and ideas, he was the only one who could write it. Oth­ers may write sim­i­lar books, but only he, a psy­chi­a­trist and author keen­ly devot­ed to observ­ing and under­stand­ing ideas about mean­ing, could write this par­tic­u­lar book. It was almost as if Life was expect­ing him to write it. He had a why. And with it, a rea­son to sur­vive his unspeak­able how.

I vivid­ly remem­ber fin­ish­ing the book and putting it down in aston­ish­ment. Could Life expect things of me? Is that how I could find my mean­ing? The hos­pi­tal ship had been full of enthu­si­as­tic UNO play­ers (most of whom were bet­ter at let­ting the kids win than I was), but I had been the only one there who had felt the desire to orga­nize dis­cus­sion groups. Was I the only one who could have done that thing in that way? Had Life been expect­ing me to do this?

I don’t know. I often find myself argu­ing against my why. Some­times it feels like any­thing I accom­plish could have prob­a­bly been done bet­ter by some­one else. Vic­tor Fran­kl was unique: a Holo­caust sur­vivor, a psy­chi­a­trist, and writer — life was prac­ti­cal­ly demand­ing that he write a book! But Fran­kl antic­i­pat­ed this argu­ment and also insist­ed that there exists at least one unique why for each person. 

No one can be the wife, or hus­band, or par­ent, or friend, or col­league that you are. Oth­ers may fill these roles, but they will nev­er do them the way you do. Only you can make that cre­ation you’ve dreamed of mak­ing; it may not be per­fect, but it is unique­ly you. There is some­one out there that only you can help, pro­vide for, nur­ture, inspire… some­thing you can fix, cre­ate, build upon… some­thing that Life is ask­ing you, and you alone, to do or be or make.

Only I could write this arti­cle the way it is cur­rent­ly writ­ten. Only I can strive to make my par­ents proud — to make them feel like they did a good job rais­ing me. Only I know the secret ingre­di­ent in my super-hot spicy popped-yolk eggs (it’s hot sauce… but I’ll nev­er tell which kind). So what is Life ask­ing of you?

What keeps you going?

Fran­kl makes it very clear that the book (and the rev­o­lu­tion­ary new ther­a­py it led to) did not jus­ti­fy his suf­fer­ing in the camp. But at the same time, you could argue that it was only because of this suf­fer­ing that he was able to cre­ate the book and, in turn, help count­less peo­ple in the years there­after. To rec­on­cile this, I think we need to mis­quote Niet­zsche just as Fran­kl did: A per­son who knows their why can bear with almost any how, but you have to be able to bridge the gap between them. That is one of the unique things about Frankl’s sto­ry — his how and why were so close­ly con­nect­ed that there was much less space for dis­sat­is­fac­tion or cynicism. 

After the war, Dr. Fran­kl was fond of ask­ing his psy­chi­atric patients a rather intense ques­tion: ​“Why haven’t you killed your­self?” I don’t think mod­ern doc­tors could ask this (nor does it get great reac­tions when I pose it to oth­ers on first dates or at Christ­mas par­ties). But because it is such a sharp and point­ed ques­tion, it serves as an incred­i­bly straight­for­ward method of get­ting to a person’s why. And the inter­est­ing thing is that it’s almost impos­si­ble to answer ​“mon­ey” to this ques­tion; I haven’t found any­one who has held off on sui­cide in order to pay their next util­i­ty bill. 

So what is your why? What is Life ask­ing of you? What keeps you going? Even the best work­places will some­times involve (rel­a­tive) suf­fer­ing. Every job will feel point­less and mean­ing­less some days. And even if you’ve ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed your why, some­times the how can feel so far removed from it that work­ing to get there doesn’t feel worth your while. So what do you do when you can’t seem to bridge the gap between them? What do we do when we’re locked into some­thing that doesn’t seem to be tak­ing us any­where near our rea­son for liv­ing? How can we make our how more manageable?

1. Know your why and your how. This bears rep­e­ti­tion. None of this will make sense otherwise.

2. Find some­thing at your job that you can do or change in order to make it more mean­ing­ful. At the very least, set up and sur­round your­self with reminders of your why.

3. The biggest gap between our how and why is often tem­po­ral. Maybe you promised your­self this job would only be for a cer­tain peri­od of time. Have you gone past your imposed dead­line? Con­sid­er mov­ing on to some­thing else — a dif­fer­ent how.

4. Quit. Some­times the job you’re work­ing sim­ply will not get you to your why no mat­ter how much mon­ey you make. It could be time for a career change. If this isn’t an option, focus on #2 or #5 or #6.

5. Make an Action Plan. Where do you want to see your­self in 5 years? What can you change about your sit­u­a­tion in order to move towards that? Maybe you learn some new skills on Ude­my or Lyn​da​.com, or down­load a lan­guage learn­ing app so you can one day trav­el or live abroad, or check out Meet​up​.com to find oth­er peo­ple doing that eso­teric hob­by you’ve always want­ed to get into. Or heck, grab some books at the library on how to cro­chet win­ter hats, set up a web­site with Word­press, and start that online busi­ness you’ve been think­ing about.

6. Pri­or­i­tize your why when you are not work­ing. Make sure you are spend­ing your free time pur­su­ing mean­ing­ful moments. Is fam­i­ly your thing? Binge less Net­flix and instead cook a meal for them. Are you my friend Jason? Go do some lamp-lit gar­den­ing. Are you a helper? Vol­un­teer in your com­mu­ni­ty. Every­one else? Call your Grand­moth­er or get involved at your church or find moments to take in the beau­ty of nature or read a good book (may I sug­gest Vic­tor Frankl).

7. Vis­it these great lists on oth­er web­sites.

There will be days when this will seem impos­si­ble, when cyn­i­cism will sneak in despite your best efforts. Some­times you will feel com­plete­ly stuck where you are. On those days, when that hap­pens to me, I often think of one of the best scenes from The Simp­sons—that ani­mat­ed and satir­i­cal depic­tion of work­ing-class life. Homer, after hav­ing to crawl back and beg for his job in the nuclear plant, is pre­sent­ed with a de-moti­va­tion­al poster that says: ​“Don’t For­get You’re Here For­ev­er.” Lat­er, when his kids ask why there are so few baby pic­tures of Mag­gie around the house, he responds that he ​“keeps them where he needs them the most.” And then the scene cuts back to his office where he has wall­pa­pered the giant poster with pic­tures of Mag­gie in a pat­tern that cov­ers up some of the let­ters. As a result, the de-moti­va­tion­al phrase now reads: ​“Do It For Her.” Say what you will about Homer Simp­son, but the man knows his why.

Does My Job Matter?

I’ll be hon­est. When I start­ed writ­ing this arti­cle I didn’t think my job mat­tered at all.

When I part­ed from Sebas­t­ian that day, it was to go to my serv­ing shift at a restau­rant. I left a dis­cus­sion about tru­ly and pro­found­ly mean­ing­ful moments to spend eight hours bring­ing peo­ple food and then tak­ing away their plates. For years I’ve known what Life wants me to do — to write about self-improve­ment and facil­i­tate impor­tant dis­cus­sions. Yet more often than not the most impor­tant thing I ask peo­ple is whether or not they are aller­gic to nuts.

But writ­ing this arti­cle once again remind­ed me of my why. It reframed those eight-hour serv­ing shifts as part of the how that allows me to do the things that are impor­tant and mean­ing­ful to me: writ­ing, trav­el­ling, meet­ing new peo­ple, and work­ing towards a life where my how and my why become clos­er and more connected.

I think it’s okay if our jobs aren’t what come to mind when we think about our most mean­ing­ful moments. Because our jobs can help to make those mean­ing­ful moments pos­si­ble. So maybe we need to change the ques­tion above from: ​“Does my job mat­ter?” to ​“How does my job mat­ter?” We all have moments that make life worth liv­ing, expe­ri­ences and peo­ple that are impor­tant to us and keep us going when we get stuck. The quest before us now is to work on see­ing how our jobs can help us move towards them — clos­ing the gap between what we do and why we’re doing it.