The answer to my lifelong search for meaning and happiness in times of suffering seems surprisingly simple: To live a meaningful life regardless of circumstances is to have the courage and responsibility to become what you were meant to be, to become your best self as a gift to others.
Are you worried about being vulnerable? “Vulnerability” is derived from the Latin word vulnerare (to be wounded); it describes the potential to be injured physically and/or psychologically. Generally, people consider vulnerability as weakness and the opposite of resilience.
I want to wish every Meaning Partner a Happy New Year! Looking back, it has been an exciting year with our 20th anniversary celebration for the INPM and my 80th birthday celebration.
Since I have already announced my intention to step down as President of the INPM, I want to share my vision with members and supporters for the future of the INPM and my succession plan.
On May 6, I did a one-hour interview at the Fairchild TV Studio in Richmond Hill, Ontario, for their program Leisure Talk (大城小聚), which features special guests discussing topics of interest to the Chinese community in Canada. My topic happened to be meaning therapy as a way to help people live better and happier lives […]
As another anniversary of 9-11 arrived, I found myself contemplating how fragile the world seems sometimes. It is difficult to understand the meaning of life in times of tragedy and suffering.
There it was, projecting up at me from the top of an advertisement page in a weekly news magazine: “take this job and love it!” Why did this phrase capture my attention? Besides the fact that it was an obvious take off on an old country music hit, “take this job and shove it, I ain’t working here no more,” I also think it was the audacity of someone thinking that work could be fun!
It was a gloomy day with darkish sky. A chilly wind drove shoppers into the stores and coffee shops. The holiday-weary faces and the retro song “Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer” reminded me of poor Charlie Brown and his sad gang. Good grief, this can be a season of depression and misery for many people!
Often intuition is the deciding factor between failure and success. Even though we don’t know precisely what intuition is, at the gut level we all know that it is there and that it can be summoned to our aid whenever we feel overwhelmed.
We are in the grip of a crisis of international proportions. Is it terrorism? Is it ethnopolitical conflict? I suggest that the underlying problem may be the loss of reverence for life.
In a diverse multicultural society, respect for others is touted as the highest virtue while reverence for life is relegated to the dustbin of history. There is something incongruent and self-contradictory in these two social trends.