What’s Your (Life) Story?

What, if anything, can give meaning to a human life? Is meaning out there to be discovered, or is it something we create? And does a meaningful life look like a good story?

Maybe a meaningful life is one that’s worthwhile, one you feel has not been wasted. In that case, your life is meaningful if, during your time on earth, you’ve managed to raise good kids, help people in need, build cool things, write great books, live peacefully, or in some other way put your highest values into action. It very likely involves pain and sacrifice—a meaningful life is not the same as a sorrow-free one—but if you’re happy with what you’ve accomplished, you will see the pain and that sacrifice as worth it, given what you’ve been able to achieve.

Grand achievements very often seem to involve a bit of narrative thinking. If you want to build the next Taj Mahal, you can’t do it overnight: first you have to study architecture, then you have to draw up some blueprints, then you have to raise the money, then lay the foundations… That plan is a little story—a narrative of the future.

Plus, if you want consider whether your life so far has been meaningful, you’re almost certainly going to tell yourself a narrative of the past. “I spent 9 years studying architecture, and collected quite a bit of debt, but it was all worthwhile.”

Still, isn’t all this talk of storytelling a bit narcissistic? Why not just focus on the people you can help, the kids you’re trying to raise, or the books you are struggling to write? And even if you’re OK with constantly thinking about yourself, doesn’t your story risk being highly selective, not to say full of lies? If the meaning of my life depends on my story, but I’m the only one who can really tell it, and I can’t be trusted to get it right, does meaning evaporate? That’s exactly what our guest is going to tell us: it’s Helena de Bres, author of “Narrative and Meaning in Life.”