When people talk about “higher” meaning or “greater” meaning, many of them know intuitively that it is about meaning outside themselves. But then they draw the logical conclusion that the more people they impact, the more meaning they’ll have and so they think that the best goal to have is to “change the world” or “save the world” for the greatest meaning possible. While you can definitely have that goal if you wish, it obviously has risks in terms of how you spend your time and whether you consider yourself successful. So let’s talk about meaning and the all-important question of what you can expect from what you strive for in life.
The good news is that you don’t need to change the world to have plenty of meaning for a lifetime. Some people find meaning in good times with friends and serving their community. That is plenty of meaning for one lifetime if that is what the person is striving for. It’s a Wonderful Life showed in the most blatant way possible when George Bailey kept trying to leave what he thought was a little, insignificant town to do “big things” only to keep getting pulled back in (kind of a like a positive version of the famous The Godfather trilogy quote) to help the people in the community thrive. In the end, he realized that he had significance and was, to quote his brother in the film, “the richest man in town”—obviously, that was referring to his combination of family, friends, community, and impact and not his financial success.
You can also simply be yourself and strive to be the best version of yourself. Maybe you love singing or playing an instrument; maybe you love writing or building things. Whatever you like to do, if you spend a lot of time doing it, that is focusing on what matters to you in life. And if you don’t judge your life based on what others deem to be significant, then all that matters is that you spent time doing things that mattered (i.e., had meaning) to you.
And that’s the thing about meaning: nothing has any meaning unless a person assigns it, so you have to ask yourself, “to whom?” anytime you wonder what meaning is. Most people jump to this size = significance association and state that things like planets and starts are significant because they are massive, but there are literally billions (or trillions or more) of planets that are so large that light can’t escape their gravitational pull (also known as black holes), and yet you’ve never spent one moment thinking about them or even being aware of their existence—let alone caring about them and giving them some importance in your life that changed how you live. So that’s not what meaning is, nor is the idea of celebrity or political power necessarily more important than whatever you do with your life—yes, they do influence how many people live (from their fashion to their behavior), but that still doesn’t make their lives objectively more meaningful because there are plenty of people who don’t care about celebrities or politicians and so give them no significance to their lives. So all that’s left is for you to decide what matters to you and do what you think is best for your life to feel special to you.
The last part of this post is really to question the entire premise of changing or saving the world. First of all, who exactly are you saving, and from what? Yes, absolutely there are slaves in this world and other forms of oppressive conditions that people would be better off without. But, fortunately, most people are not under said conditions anymore, so if you want to try to stop slavery or end oppression, then you would be better able to attain that goal by setting up non-profits to raise awareness for and help specific people in those conditions and not generalizing it as “saving the world”—helping people in need is a fine goal. Mother Theresa is a great example, as she helped children in Calcutta. She is one of the most beloved figures in history, and she was far from a world-saver. She helped people. And that is what gave her such significance.
Outside of real people in need, the world doesn’t necessarily need “saving”. Yes, it might be nice if people had more freedom or safety, but unfortunately those are trade-offs and so there is no magical formula that will maximize both perfectly (someone in solitary confinement with a perfect diet and temperature would be perfectly safe but have almost no freedom; someone in the middle of the woods would have maximum freedom but almost no safety). Most people simply live in a home, eat, sleep, drink, work, and have friends and family, and that’s it. They don’t need to be “saved”. Individuals might have specific issues like sickness, conflict, or injury, but the world as a whole doesn’t need saving. As such, you can get plenty of meaning focusing on specific improvements for specific people than trying to think that you could do something that would “save” everyone.
Similarly, “changing the world” is an ambitious goal, but it is either unnecessary or meaningless. Significant change is the unnecessary side: most people reject major changes. You see this everywhere: if a radical governmental change occurred, millions of citizens would resist it; if a lottery winner receives all of his or her winnings at once, the winner often loses it all within a few years. Worse, if you do something like give someone money, they are grateful for a few days but then quickly acclimate and then need more—often expecting you to give them more for nothing like you did before. This is on top of the fact that major changes take years to adopt across geographies, languages, cultures, and socioeconomic classes. This is not to say that change is impossible—it absolutely is possible when, say, a new technology like the cell phone comes along and it gets adopted by almost everyone within years instead of decades like previous technologies like the refrigerator or microwave. But that change is by providing a product or service that makes someone’s life better and for them seeking it out willingly vs. some change being enacted upon them. So, as the saying goes, you can “be the change you want to see in the world” and then the world responds.
On the other side, everything you do in life “changes the world” as in it is different because you are in the world. So in that sense, the idea of “changing the world” is meaningless because you do it every moment of every day with every breath you take. So what you really mean is change it in some significant or noticeable way. Again, that is an absolutely fine goal, but it’s better to be specific and work toward something that benefits you and the people you care about as a means of improving the world around you vs. trying to win political office and set laws that force people to make goods or provide services for other people (for example). Yes, history will write stories about inventors and political leaders, but being in a history book is not necessarily meaningful in and of itself—so 3rd graders have to remember who you are for a test question…and then what? Better to focus on tangible improvements to real-world problems that, when solved, you would be incredibly happy to have addressed. And it doesn’t have to be you by yourself…you can simply join an organization that, for example, provides clean water to people and your participation as a program coordinator can provide the support necessary for that vision to be realized—no inventing some new gizmo required.
In short, meaning doesn’t require you to save the world, and you can change the world by doing what you can to make yourself and the people around you better off in some way than they were before. That’s it. You don’t have to aggrandize it at all or set goals so large that they are either impossible to make progress toward today or that they might even be (ironically) of little interest or even detrimental to the people you think that you would be helping. Also, beware of having what you believe to be audacious goals that appear to be altruistic when they’re really self-serving or appear to be your passion when you’re really doing it to look good to others. In both cases, you are defrauding people—maybe even including yourself—and won’t find any true sense of life satisfaction from it. If you are pretending to be doing things for others but are really doing it for yourself, then you might begin to take advantage of others for personal gain, which will take you in the wrong direction. If you are doing things for approval but don’t really enjoy it, you’ll likely feel hollow or empty inside doing it.
If you really want to do something meaningful, do something to improve the lives of yourself and the people around you. That will have the most direct meaning and significance. If you have the capability to build things, invent things, or lead people toward the completion of some large, important project, then of course you can do that. But it’s not required if that’s not your thing—people’s lives change every day from a song, a speech, a great meal at a restaurant, or a last-minute rental car to get to a wedding after a canceled flight. You don’t need to change the world or “save” it to find the meaning you’re looking for; all you need is personal growth for meaning in your own life and fostering others’ growth for “greater” meaning in impacting the world around you.