Critical Essay about Meaning Kaven Choi Qi Chao 23563400

Unit Code: PSY2042 Due Date: 19 September 2013 Tutor: Ms. Simran Kaur Lab class: Wednesday, 4-6pm

What is meaning? What is meant by a word, text, concept, or action is the answer given by Google. We could ask ourselves the question, why are we living at the very moment and you are questioning the meaning of your life and questioning the purpose of our existence. This is similar to what is meaning, which is the purpose of something whether a word or speech or something intangible, our life. In order to answer meaning, we need to look back to ourselves. How do we define something and in what situation we are to define something to give it a meaning. A traffic light working on a junction of the street might provide no meaning at all to a person who is color blind but the traffic light serve the purpose to provide order and flow to the traffic for people who sees it. Everything and everyone that revolves in our daily life has a meaning and if it does not mean anything to you at all but it does provide meaning to someone else. The meaning of meaning could be an intention. Like the example given above, the traffic light intends to provide the road user safety and order to reach their destination. Ultimately, the meaning of meaning is the purpose or the intention of something or someone regardless if we see it or not. As a person, what do we need to experience meaning in life? Baumeister and Wilson (1996) mentioned that in order for us to regard our lives as sufficiently meaningful, we need to satisfy the need for purpose, value and justification, efficacy and the need for self-worth. In my opinion, I agree that we need to have a purpose in our life to experience the meaning in life. Mentioned earlier, the meaning of meaning is the purpose or the intention of something or someone and for our life to mean something, we too need a purpose in our lives to fully justify our life as purposeful or meaningful. Each and every one of us serves a specific or a range of purpose in this world regardless it is to continue the familys name to help someone or to change the society. However, most important of all is that did we identify the purpose and live on with the purpose in mind? Ask yourself this question what are you living for now? Sometime people would think they are lifeless and meaningless because they deviated from their sole purpose of living thus they have nothing to live for and this decrease their meaning of life. For example, what is the purpose of a musicians life? He or she might tell you that he or she is currently writing an amazing song or composing orchestra music that would make audience feel how they feel or to convey certain message and so on he or she continue to make music and they are clear on their pathway. Lee Chong Wei, Malaysians badminton player, played so hard against rival during the recent Olympics as he knows that the purpose he has to give his best is because Malaysias name is on his shoulder and he want to bring the country its first gold medal hence with his purpose on life, he touches many fellow Malaysians heart (Baumeister & Wilson, 1996)and even gives others purpose of doing something for example badminton players dreamed of being like Lee Chong Wei and they continue to practice hard hence having a purpose of life already. We have identified the needs that we need to fulfill to experience the meaning in life but how can we enhance the experience of meaning in life? To entirely experience the meaning of life, not only we must have to seek the internal sense of needs, we also have to discover the external things we need to compliment into our life to allow us to truly enhance the experience of meaning in life (Stillman, Lambert, Fincham, & Baumeister, 2010). Past research mentioned that external factor from oneself which is building interpersonal relationship also could add flavors to meaning

in life. I feel that having a bond, a relationship and association to someone is an important driver for a person, which can act like catalyst or enhancement to meaning for a persons life. From a more simpler prospective, How could I type in English when I do not meet my English teacher during my schooling period? Having an association to my teacher allows me to interact with my world more with the lesson I learnt and thus adding more flavors to my life hence increasing the meaning in my life. Forming interpersonal relationship along our lives helps us in defining the meaning of our lives. The first interpersonal relationships we form in our lives are with our parents. They provide us with our necessity and thus our life began shaping. Parents provide us with moral education, ethics and value and justification. From then onwards our lifes meaning are form and based on our parents teachings. When we grow bigger and attend school, we approach our second interpersonal relationship we meet our friends. Friends are an important enhancement of meaning in life. We interact with many friends, there are some who stayed and they are some who left. With friends, we learn how to work in groups, how to socialize and how to see things in a different persons prospective. All of these make up pieces and puzzle of who we are today and how we interact with the world now hence giving our life interaction with meaning of our lives. Forming interpersonal relationship is not only important for us to experience meaning in our lives, the lack of interpersonal relationship also cause one self to lose track of all socially mediated meanings, purposes and value (Stillman, Baumeister, Lambert, Crescioni, Dewall, & Fincham, 2009). Stillman and friends (2009) also mentioned that social inclusion also cause a global reduction in the perception of life as meaningful. People who are socially weak tend to find the problem of them socializing as a problem in their life thus reducing the meaningful part of their life to shine and this is a rolling effect and it does affect ones life dramatically which in turn curb the experience of meaning in life. In order to enhance my experience of meaning in life, I would first be myself and believe in myself. Being what other people want you to be diminish our meaning of life as we are there to please others but not ourselves. Being ourselves is to really be comfortable in our daily life and when we are in our most comfortable form, we feel confident to engage in activities and peoples. We do not live to please others but we also do not live to hurt others. We have to remember that being ourselves does not mean we have to neglect the negative side of ourselves but to believe in our own judgments and self-efficacy in accordance to socially acceptable moral code and do not in anyway our action hurts others mentally or physically. In this way, we could have our life planned out and experience a better quality of meaning in life. To enhance our experience of meaning in life, we also could get ourselves occupied either with hobbies or social work or any beneficial activities. With something to hold onto in our lives, not only it can distract us from all the negativity, it can also let us improve in every aspect of our lives. When we are occupied with some activities, we are also having a purpose in life. Let say we are engaged with a sport, it can help to build our physical health and keep our mind active leaving no space of other negativity and hence enhance positivity in building meanings in our lives.

Works Cited
Baumeister, R. F., & Wilson, B. (1996). Life Stories and the Four Needs for Meaning. Psychology Inquiry , 7 (4), 322-377. Stillman, T. F., Baumeister, R. F., Lambert, N. M., Crescioni, A. W., Dewall, C. N., & Fincham, F. D. (2009). Alone and Without Purpose: Life Loses Meaning Following Social Exclusion. J Exp Soc Psychol , 45 (4), 686-694. Stillman, T. F., Lambert, N. M., Fincham, F. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2010). Meaning as Magnetic Force: Evidence That Meaning in Life Promotes Interpersonal Appeal. Social Psychological and Personality Science , 1-8.