Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I think all of us, as we age, start asking some of the same questions. What impact have I made in my life, do I have any regrets, and we start to question the meaning of our time here on Earth. I’ve been really in this head space the last couple of years, along with the related questions related to what I’m passionate about.

The pandemic put a lot of life on pause for a lot of us. But that pause gave us all time to think and consider our lives. Including a lot of people who have never stopped and thought about what they were doing in life. This has led to what the media has called the great resignation, the fact that a lot of people after considering their lives decided to change career paths.

Many of us are like logs in a river, just floating along and going where life takes us. But I’ve always thought I needed to steer some. But steer toward what? That’s where meaning in life comes in, because it’s that meaning that determines where you steer yourself in the river of life and guides you as to what you will do.

At times I have to admit that in this respect I have felt like a failure. I’ve always been a person who’s interested in everything, so there is no single overriding thing that is the focus or meaning in my life. Recently, I’ve realized that there is another way to look at this. You see I’ve fallen prey to the American script in this respect. You see in America there always has to be a gold medal, an award, a big finish if you will. But is that really how things have to be?

Recently I saw a post on social media that talked about meaning in life, meaning with a small “m” they called it. It was a short post but an incredibly eye opening one for me. Meaning doesn’t have to be some large thing you accomplish, every pyramid is made up a huge number of blocks. In your life, meaning can be the accumulation of those blocks.

So the homeless student I worked with Friday to help get them a hotel voucher in order to make getting through a medical procedure more easily is a block. Helping people I supervise realize their goals and get into better positions is a block. All of the small meaningful acts of support and kindness that we do for others are part of that meaning, the blocks that make up the meaningful pyramid of in our life. I really appreciated this perspective and it’s frankly made me feel a bit better about my own journey and I hope it does the same for you my friends. ~ Rev Kane