Quotes About Meaning

what living things provide. In place of boredom, they offer spontaneity. In place of loneliness, they offer companionship. In place of helplessness, they offer a chance to take care of another being.

The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society. If you don't, mortality is only a horror. But if you do, it is not.

A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life;

that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives.

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all of its moments — which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story.

It is much harder to measure how much more worth people find in being alive than how many fewer drugs they depend on or how much longer they can live. But could anything matter more?

In the horrible places, the battle for control escalates until you get tied down or locked into your Geri-chair or chemically subdued with psychotropic medications. In the nice ones, a staff member cracks a joke, wags an affectionate finger, and takes your brownie stash away. In almost none does anyone sit down with you and try to figure out what living a life really means to you under the circumstances, let alone help you make a home where that life becomes possible

and she asks if either might have anything to do with this.

But in the end, I came to think, there was also something more vital and, in a certain way, poignant drawing us in.

But the fact of eight deaths must mean something, right?

We could never bring ourselves to discuss the larger truth about his condition or the ultimate limits of our capabilities, let alone what might matter most to him as he neared the end of his life.

life designed to be safe but empty of anything they care about.

The best way to convey meaning is to tell people what the information means to you yourself, he said. And he gave me three words to use to do that. I am worried, I told Douglass.

For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments. (...) And in stories, endings matter. (...) Endings matter, not just for the person but, perhaps even more, for the ones left behind.

The answer, he believed, is that we all seek a cause beyond ourselves. This was, to him, an intrinsic human need. The cause could be large (family, country, principle) or small (a building project, the care of a pet). The important thing was that, in ascribing value to the cause and seeing it as worth making sacrifices for, we give our lives meaning.

that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life;

For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens.

it's the meaning behind the information that people are looking for more than the facts. The best way to convey meaning is to tell people what the information means to you yourself, he said. And he gave me three words to use to do that.

AT THE CENTER of Wilson's work was an attempt to solve a deceptively simple puzzle: what makes life worth living when we are old and frail and unable to care for ourselves?

A seemingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.

The answer, he believed, is that we all seek a cause beyond ourselves.

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments--which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For hum beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens.

they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives. Inevitably

our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives.