The art of happiness - dream remix

How do we derive meaning?

I woke up with this question, at the tail end of a dream series that could have doubled as a graduate seminar in philosophy or spiritual studies.

My dreams were not unusual - there was an anxiety dream about trying to find a bathroom in the middle of a cactus garden; there was a dream about being on a train tour with writers and politicians and making a plan to seduce the aloof, sensual female author in my sleeping car; I became friends with the woman who showed me a secret entrance to the hotel pool while I was scouting for an escape from our prisoner of war compound.

But all night, my dream experiences were analyzed through the lens of meaning.  I was hyper aware of when and why in each dream my engagement and happiness were high and when they were low.

How do we derive meaning?  My dreams said:

From our social network - by being part of friendships or partnerships or families
From our experience - participating in adventure or documenting and organize the events of our lives or immersion in art/writing/food/sex
From our contribution - doing meaningful career or hobby or volunteer work or raising families or creating art
The one I missed and thought of on waking - faith 

Death, divorce, loss of a job,  loss of faith are life events considered extraordinarily stressful.  What do they have in common?  From my dream perspective, it's all about identity, purpose and connection.  When we lose someone we love to death, divorce or some other breakup we lose the meaningfulness of having our relationship to them.  If we are disowned or excommunicated, we lose the identity and connection to community.  Lose a job, we lose our answer to What do you do? and a concrete daily task list.  If we become too sick to work or participate in activities we lose engagement and satisfaction.  Loss of faith sends us into a limbo where it is no longer clear how to view and organize the world into meaning; it may challenge the very notion that life has any purpose at all.

My own happiness, sense of purpose, engagement, satisfaction, depends on connections, identity, activities.  If I lose a job or a person or an ability, the other things in my life are supportive.  But if I lose many things at once, or one thing that is supremely important, it can be hard to keep waking up to the world.  It loses its color, satisfaction is replaced by despair and eventually engagement by universal disinterest.

How do we derive meaning?

When I am low, I can't answer this question.  I don't see a purpose to being.  My little human life is so short in comparison to the lifetime of the universe, my existence unlikely to matter or be recorded, and I am so often caught up in the minutiae of survival and the prison of my own ego that I don't put my energy into the things I'm really good at, that are truly satisfying, or that I believe matter.

Depression is both a medical and spiritual condition.  It is certainly physiological.  It can be rescued pharmaceutically.  It can be brought on by sensory overload, by overwhelming demands, by loss, by trauma, or illness.  But it is fundamentally about being able to participate in life in a way that is experienced as meaningful.