#20 The Quest for Meaning: Dr. Joel Vos on Navigating Midlife

I am very excited to share with you my conversation with Dr. Joel Vos.  In this first episode of a two-part series, we dive into the rich tapestry of life's meanings, uncovering how various cultures and individuals construct purpose throughout history. Joel Vos, a seasoned researcher and thinker in the field of psychology, shares his extensive knowledge and personal insights, bringing a fresh perspective to the quest for a meaningful existence.

Our conversation begins with an exploration of the fascinating historical evolution of meaning in life, examining the diverse paths people have taken to forge a sense of purpose. Joel offers enlightening viewpoints on the methods of meaning-making that contribute to greater psychological well-being and satisfaction, emphasizing the importance of understanding the wide array of approaches available to us.

Focusing on the pivotal phase of midlife, Joel illuminates the existential challenges that often emerge, guiding us through these experiences with a compassionate and scientifically informed lens. Whether you're navigating midlife yourself or simply interested in deepening your understanding of life's purposes, Joel's insights offer a thought-provoking roadmap to authenticity and a renewed sense of purpose.

Visit Joel's Website: https://joelvos.com/
Books By Joel Vos (Amazon Affiliate Link)
Man's Search For Meaning By Viktor Frankl (Amazon Affiliate Link)

Transcript

  And so welcome to the show, Joel. 

Thank you very much. 

Just really happy you're here. Could you start by giving us a little of your personal experience and how you got interested in today's topics?  

Yeah. So I really enjoy that, that you've now invited me for this particular podcast about midlife.

Because I've never really reflected about how my, work, how my life work about research and meaning in life, how that actually relates to midlife, not in this way. Of course, of course, to some extent, I have, of course, as a researcher, but, but to really focus on that, to really hone in. So thank you very much for the opportunity.

What I also find, yeah, what I also find important is always when we talk about meaning in life, it's not only theory, it's practice and and get out of, um,  So as preparation for our interview, I was reflecting on your questions actually for myself because I'm at this moment also in the midlife and I am, I'm asking the same questions like where am I coming from?

Where am I now? Where I'm going to?  I, I've started to ask myself also the question for myself personally. About  actually about what my own meaning in life is.

Of course, I've been reflecting a lot on that during my full lifetime. And also as being a, I'm a researcher, I'm a therapist, I'm a lecturer. I've written many books all about meaning in life,  but it's not only theory. I've been reflecting on that myself.  So  I've been going back in my earliest memory. So possibly my first memory that I have.

So I remember that I'm standing in front of my family. I have asked my family to sit on the sofa in front of me. And. They were all surprised. They didn't know what I was going to do. And I did a book reading. And you would be like, fair enough, giving a book read, there's nothing special about it. Well, I was three or four years old. 

And I had written my first book.  Of course I couldn't write any letters yet. So it was all mere gibberish. So I invented my own letters.  Very cool.  And of course I made a story, I made it up on the spot. But my family, they, they, they found it hilarious, of course. And, and they reinforced me to tell more stories, to write more of those kind of books with self invented letters.

Of course, very quickly, my parents started to also teach me how to write because they could see that I was fascinated by how people write things. They tell stories and they, so of course I could see that that is what all the grownups did. So we also wanted that, but so it's intriguing how. at such an early age of possibly three, four or five years old, it already became my big sense of meaning in life.

So I think it's quite rare. I've, I've, I've worked with thousands of people and, and I've done research and possibly millions of people across the globe. And it's very rare that people already have a sense of meaning already in such an early age. But I think that, I also can tell this story about my writing as a sense of meaning, because it also shows how, how very often as a child, we already have a, can have a spontaneous sense of meaning.

And it's important to listen to, to those initial gut feelings and, and what we have.  My story is also when I reflect on my own life, I can also see how this sense of meaning has helped me through a lot of hardships. And that's what a lot of your listeners will also possibly also acknowledge in their own life.

How the darkest moments in your life, how a sense of meaning can pull you through. So already as a child, the thing is, I've had quite a challenging childhood with, for example, I had a lot of brain surgeries because I had some tumors in my ear. And and what actually happened was. That my writing helped me to cope with that.

So I still remember that I was in my hospital bed,  and, and, and I was there in the hospital. But in my fantasy, I was in the outside world, because I was writing my stories. And that helped me. And it was even at one point in my life, I was very desperate.

And at some point in my life, of course, having had all, all, all, all those childhood, very traumatic experience. I was like, one point I was staring at, I was standing on a bridge and I was looking at some water. I was like, how would, how would it be like to actually drown myself? And then I was like, come on, you're no,  absolutely not.

Because writing is important. And I want to have books published.  That's the reason to live. And absolutely it has been worth more than to actually continue. But I think that a lot of us have been at the crossroads in our lives where we are like, Why would I keep going, even in all this suffering? Yeah.

And even though I already had it as a kid, those experiences were always a kid. And I already had like a sense of like, This is what drives my life. But a sense of meaning, it's not only a negative thing. And sometimes people, they think that meaning in life, it's, it's, it is just a distraction of suffering.

So meaning is not only a negative motivation, it can become meaningful inherently in itself. Like, for example, for me, writing, uh, I don't need it. I still, to some extent, yeah, when I'm still in a stress or whatever, when I go back to my writing, it's still a good distraction. I'm going to, I'm not going to deny.

Yes. Yeah.  It's a pull in my life. And I think that this is what a lot of people can recognize for themselves when you look at what's important for you in your life. Yeah, and yeah, so I think that this is very much where I've always had this very strong sense of meaning. And then I, throughout my life, I've always been surprised how other people don't really have that.

So,  That's why I started started to study psychology, philosophy, and, and and now I've become like a kind of a world leading author and researcher on meaning in life, actually.  Because I'm so surprised how people have different senses of meaning, or not sense meaning at all, people are struggling with that.

 One of the stories that also have driven me in my journey and which now kind of, I'm reflecting a lot on that now during my midlife, possibly even my kind of midlife crisis to say it's a little bit dramatic, but it's, it's, it's one of my memories when I was, I think, 18, 19 years old.

So I just started studying psychology or philosophy and and I had this interview that I did with this older man  and he told me, Yoel, please promise me that you will not get stuck in your life and He said, he told me his life story. He said, well, yeah, well,  when I was your age, I fell in love and then I got some children, but to be able to pay them and give them a good house, I had to have a good house, but to have that, I needed a good mortgage to have a good mortgage.

I needed to have a good job, but to have a good job, I needed to work many hours. But then I worked for so many hours that I couldn't see my kids. I couldn't go on holiday. I couldn't explore life. I was stuck and then suddenly I got retired before I knew and my energy is gone. My health has gone. Yes, I can still travel a bit.

My, all my children, they have now flown out and, and, but I don't have the same energy or drive anymore. It's like, I feel guilty. I've not used opportunities that I've had in my life. And this is a story that really stuck with me. And this has been a driver since I was 18 or 19 years old. So where I was aware of like, I don't want to waste my time.

I don't want to get stuck. And now I'm in midlife. And I'm reflecting back on my own stories, my story of how as a child, how I already had writing as a sense of strong meaning, which helped me through hardships. But I also have this story, and I'm now looking at myself like,  am I stuck? Yes, I do have a mortgage.

Yes, I am already working at the same employer for quite a while. And I realize in my job, possibly I'm doing a lot of stuff that are meaningful, but also a lot of stuff that's not meaningful. Like as a university lecturer, possibly most of my time I'm doing admin. Thank you. And and I'm like,  why am I doing that?

So of course I started to question all the things, all the stories that I had in my life are coming back.  And this is a point where I am now at, and in my personal life. And this is where I now go back to, to a certain researcher. We've done a lot of research and meaning in life. And he has said some very wise things about that, apparently, and a person happens to be me, myself.

So I'm going back to tell myself, like. Hey, Yoel the expert, what would you advise me to, Yoel, the person who lives in your daily life, trying to make sense of the thing called life? 

 

Definitely. I think it's really interesting that your first memory was a story, because I feel like that's an important part of how we make meaning. We tell stories about ourselves. And I really enjoyed reading in your work. Uh, the different ways that people construct meaning.  And so could you talk a little bit more about that?

Absolutely.   I often use the word approach like how do we approach meaning in life? And by the word approach, it's just saying, in what ways do we find out what life is about and how we live a meaningful life? Because our teachers, they teach us how to write and, and, and our parents, they teach us how to behave, but  who is teaching us or telling us how to live?

 So this thing I've always been fascinated about. So I've literally traveled all over the world. I've been in many different places and, and I've mainly be fascinated by meeting people, for example, in some tribes where I was the first Western person who they actually met. And then speaking with them and getting inspired and letting all my own assumptions  By their wisdom and the ways of living that I'm thinking, why, why have I developed my sense of meaning in the way how I've done that?

Why is that? And it's my way of doing things actually the best. I'm not sure. So  then I started doing more research on those questions. And I think we're going to talk more about that later in this podcast.  But,  but just to say that there are three. main ways or three main approaches to how people find meaning in life. In the first place, a lot of people, they use that tradition to find out what life is about. So we talk about religion. We talk about following social expectations, or for example, in the middle ages people were relegated to a certain position in society.

Like for example, if you are born a peasant,  You will become a peasant and your sense of meaning in life would be about being a peasant. So that's a more traditional way of, yeah, of, of kind of following the expectations. Then around this 15, 16, 1700, we had the, uh, Enlightenment. We had Renaissance. And for the first time in history, people started to ask themselves the personal question, what is my meaning in life?

So this question we ask nowadays about what's my meaning in life, that question is only 300 or 400 years old.  We think it's a question people have asked all the time. It's not. No, because traditionally, you didn't have to ask that question because  it was given and and so asking this personal question.

That is a product of a modern time. Yes, of course, we've always had some authors who were in a very privileged position, usually elderly white men. It had a lot of servants and slaves helping them. People like, for example, the philosopher Plato or the ancient Greek or, or, or, or the ancient Egyptians, but those people or Cicero, people like those, they were privileged men and whereas like ordinary people didn't ask us questions and this what happened in like 6, 700 and people started to ask us questions, but as you know, at the same time, when, when also people started to live in cities, more people became more educated, things like that.

Also the period. There was the idea about, very optimistic about human beings, but human beings are being seen as a machine, as a machine that can be controlled. There's also the idea about life, that life is like a machine. So this is a very, so it's not a traditional approach to life, but it's mechanistic.

Approach life,  or I sometimes describe it as a functionalistic approach, because I'm seeing it almost as a kind of a mathematical function, you know, where, like, if you do a, you do B, and then the outcome is a meaningful life. And that is, we develop this way of looking at life. And very much idea, we can control things like I set forth my I set out my own life goals, and I'm going to try to strive towards them in the most linear way possible.

However, that's often not how life goes. very much. That's, we often find out, we get frustrated, et cetera. But this is like the dominant approach in neoliberal Western countries nowadays. So we have a traditional approach, we have this mechanistic approach, and then there's a third one. And I described it as a critical intuitive approach, or also called like a phenomenological approach for the people who are more philosophically oriented. 

This is about listening in a critical way to our own intuition.  So we know that already a lot from the more mystic traditions, et cetera, but nowadays  there's also more attention for that outside of any spiritual or religious traditions, such as, for example, mindfulness meditation, where you learn to listen to your gut feeling, you go inside yourself.

And you ask yourself, what is it deep inside myself that inner, that inner voice that's telling me this is important for me. And of course, at the same time, it's important to remain critical so that we're not because of intuition that can easily be swayed or it can be confused with still some of the traditions, et cetera.

But if we're critically and listen to our intuition, that can tell us a lot.  What I've then found out is that, so. As I've already said, those mechanistic approaches to life are dominant in more capitalist, western cultures, but they're also associated with a worse mental and physical well being. Same as traditional, a traditional approach to life is also associated with not the best mental or physical health. 

Whereas this critical, intuitive approach is associated with a better mental and physical health. We also see this critical intuitive approach. Yes, particularly in some more Western countries. It's coming up more and more nowadays, but it's more traditionally seen, for example, Southeast Asia when I traveled a lot to several African countries, I saw the same approach, much more dominant.

So this is already like one kind of key takeaway for your own listeners. Like of course, any approach to life. I'm not imposing anything. I'm not saying that anything is bad, but if you want to explore something that maybe may give a sense of true satisfaction or fulfillment in life, I think it's about.

Take your own intuition series and listen critically to it.  

Yeah,  I love that perspective.  . 

 talk about different research findings in terms of the. Universal meaning typologies 

 yes. So  I've already spoken a little bit about the different approaches that people have to life, but what is also really interesting.

And so if we look at, okay, what is it where people actually find their meaning in life, what are examples of meaning in life? Because this all still sounds a bit abstract. So what is it actually that people say is meaningful? So undoubtedly, when you go into any of the types of Bookstores and wherever you live, you'll see bookshelves full of books about how to live life.

They give you a lot of examples, a lot of stories about what's meaningful, but most of those books, most of the self help books, they come from a specific angle and they, they tell what's meaningful for those authors. However, I am a very curious person and I'm a scientist. So as a, being a social scientist, a researcher, I want to know, like, What do people say across the globe?

What's meaningful? So what I've done is I summarized all the studies that have ever been conducted, any surveys, any questionnaires in which people were asked about what's meaningful, important, or valuable for you in life. So I collected 107 studies, which in total had more than 45, 000 participants, and which I then later published.

Translated also into a questionnaire. And again, I was able to kind of validate and confirm those findings. But all those answers from all those 45, 000 people, I summarized those into some categories and subcategories. And I call these a universal types of meaning because surprisingly enough, or actually not surprising, it seems that all those types and subtypes meaning, you can find them across the globe.

We think that different cultures are very different. We often think we're unique. There are very universal mechanisms or universal, not mechanisms, maybe a bad word, but universal patterns and what we see as meaningful in life. So there are six, and I'm going to talk about, and I'm going to give you a very brief summary of those.

So the first types of meanings are about what I describe as materialistic types of meaning. So these are about the type of, for example, possessions or any kind of professional success or professional success. Or having success in getting a degrees. It's always anything.  visible and material. Then there are hedonistic types of meanings.

So that's, that is finding meaning in like enjoying life, embodied experiences, such as, for example, fun, leisure, going out for a drink and going to the cinema, reading a book, but also about being healthy, engaging in sports, sex, being in nature. So anything that's embodied and about about enjoyment, then there are self oriented types of meanings, which is about a value of the self.

So that's about developing yourself, autonomy, self acceptance, self care, expressing yourself, developing self insight, going on a self journey, possibly also on on also about being resilient and being resilient. And having a sense of perseverance, taking pride in yourself that you are able to get through difficult periods in your life. 

So that's about a self. So these are materialistic, hedonistic, and self oriented types of meanings that we are very used to those in our Western neoliberal countries, where they seem to be some of the most common types of meanings. At least when we listen to any of the commercials, or when we watch any television, that's what we often see.

Whereas like, when you go to We travel a little bit abroad, you'll very quickly see that for a lot of people. That's more than that. And so when I traveled across the globe, I've seen that for a lot of people, the things that we see as so meaningful are not a meaningful, for example, that's miss of the pyramid of Maslow.

It's the idea that first you need to fulfill all your materialistic needs, et cetera, before you can fulfill and reach your potential. That's nonsense. There's no empirical evidence for that.  It's not evidence based. That's a myth that has been told by gurus in businesses and companies. And that's been told in all the self development courses.

Everyone is telling you that. And look at any books from people like, for example, Stephen Covey. They will totally confirm those stories, which are not true. I'm very harsh on that.  Yes, they may be true, if these are your values. Fair enough, if that's how you find your meaning in life. When you really look at it across the globe, there's more than this.

So what are the other types of meanings then that I found in my research? These are the social types of meanings, and that's the value of being connected being part of community, but also helping others, altruism, giving birth, looking after your children or trying to make the world a better place for the next generation, looking after also all the people, partners, family life.

But. Then we also have larger types of meanings, which even go a step further.  People, some people have a sense of a specific life, life purpose for example, for myself, one of my life purposes is doing more research on meaning in life and helping others to live a more meaningful life. And I take it by writing, obviously that that's such a specific purpose in my life, but there's I cannot reduce it to any of those other times.

And then there's also personal growth. And, and it's also trying to make the world a better place, a larger sense of ethics, of justice. We see that a lot in the young generation who are really fighting against climate change, against social justice. It's, it's, it's those examples. But also sense of spirituality, connectedness with, with, with the world, with humanity, with nature, with religion, with spirituality.

And then there are also some existential philosophical types of meanings, which are more abstract. We may talk about that later, but it's usually a bit more later in life.  And these are things that people say, for example, that they find meaning in the fact that they are alive. Gratitude for being alive, sense of uniqueness, sense of responsibilities, stuff like that.

So more abstract. And so in sum, what we see is that These are six types of meaning in life and 29 subtypes of meaning that I've sneaked through in my very brief summary here.  But  we see that in the West, we focus on materialistic, hedonistic, and self oriented types of meanings. And of course, they still may give you some sense of satisfaction and some sense of happiness.

But that happiness is usually more superficial, more short lived. And usually when we come at this point in midlife, we start to realize, well, I've been focusing possibly a little bit too much on that. And there's not really What gives me full satisfaction of fulfillment in life. There's more to that. And that's, that's of course, because social larger types of meanings, research to show that gives you a much deeper sense of fulfillment and it's much, much better for mental and physical health.

And yeah. And so that is already also very relevant for the people listening to your podcast. Like, whereas they may be at a crossroads considering like, okay, what's meaningful for me. And as I'm saying, like all, everything. All those examples, all of them can give some sense of meaning and satisfaction.

And I'm not saying that anything is bad, but I would say if you can do anything, try to focus mainly on getting some social and larger types of meanings in your life. So try to look at how can you help other people? Okay. Belong to a community, possibly family. Okay. Try to make, to make the world a better place.

Ethics. But yeah. Possibly connecting a sense of connection, uh, and also sense of temporality of like knowing where, where we are, where you are in life. So things like that, they are really important and helpful for us. 

It's really helpful and clarifying and thinking about the different type typologies.

It sounds like it's a developmental process that many of us go through and it's continuing to evolve. Can you talk a little bit more about how individuals develop their sense of meanings over the lifespan and particularly for those of us in midlife? 

Yes. So a sense of meaning is something that evolves precisely as you're saying.

And quite often when people talk about meaning in life, they have the idea as if it is one specific entity, like almost like the absolute meaning of life. But I'm always saying that that is a topic that we should only leave to people like, for example, Monty Python,  who have made a Movie about the meaning of life and also ridiculing that full concept that there's one absolute meaning in life that is given that's there.

That's universal. What we know from research is precisely as I've already described is that different people experience different meanings, but also within our own life, it also evolves. It's it. It is also psychological experience that changes. And when I look at this I really like. your invitation for this podcast to really also look at the research, what is really saying about this evolution of meaning during our own lifespan.

And what I would say is like the question, the big question is like, why does meaning change over our lifespan? Why, why does not stay the same? I think that there are multiple reasons for that, but I, I, I have to come back all the time to what Viktor Frankl, one of my big source of inspiration, the psychiatrist who wrote it. 

Amazing book, Men's Search for Meaning, about experiences of living a meaningful life, even in a concentration camp, how a sense of meaning helped him through the concentration camp. But what he said is that even in a concentration camp, the worst place where you would say, how can you talk about meaning in life in a concentration camp?

He said, Even that people had a will to meaning  that is the word he used. And what it means by that is like people have a curiosity about life. We want to live and we want to explore life as much as it can. It's, it's almost like an inborn curiosity. And possibly I'm going to tell later a little bit more in a conversation about.

How it's almost evolutionary, how already animals have the sense of wanting to live and explore what's there. So I think we have the curiosity of life, trying to see everything that's out there. However, sometimes our curiosity gets suppressed or oppressed. For example, due to early life traumas, having had a very oppressive upbringing, or an oppressive religious context, like a cult, or even like, A culture or a country that that's oppressing us.

And so due to that, different people may have different developments across the lifespan. So what I'm not going to talk about some stereotypic patterns that may not apply to everyone, but usually what we often see is that in early life  and early life, a lot of people have this traditional approach that I was talking about before.

So we follow the expectations from others. We take over the meanings from our parents. So. I know the name of your podcast. We're talking off about Generation X. So when Generation X, when, when we were young let's have a look at our parents. So the stuff, the meanings that they had in their life was often about bit more religion, a lot of social expectations, conformism.

So they had like a post war working hard mentality that, uh, the more baby boom generation. So that, that's what we were told. This is what life is about. And so, of course, as a kid, what do you do? The only thing you know, you, you take that over. So you think that is what life is about. So our approach to life is quite traditional.

And  our tradition was often telling  about those things that are a bit materialistic, but bit kind of also focusing on, but also focusing on like, community on this perspective on religion that the perspective on making sure that other people  do not think bad about you things like that.

That's very much when we grow up. However, if we now jump to the current young generation, Generation Y, Z, Millennials however you want to call the younger generations, is they start to rebel against almost like what, what, what we, how we were taught and how we grew up. So, because we felt restricted quite often in our upbringing.

So, what do we do with our children? We would tell them, Well, I'm not imposing my tradition onto you.  You can develop your own sense of meaning in your life, follow your own dreams, become who you want. But then the children are like, Oh, okay. But what is that then? Because to some extent it's helpful if you have some examples from your parents.

And the thing is like, it's called generation X. And when Dr. Skuplin wrote his famous book about generation X, he actually like, The word X, it means like, on the one hand, it's an openness. We're not predefined. That is good. But at the same time, it also implies an emptiness. Like there's not a tradition or anything that is prescribed.

So our children, the younger generation, they are like, how do we do this? So it's always, it almost brings like a terror of freedom. So we see that the way how they, the traditions that they grew up with are very different than the traditions we grew up with. So that's about the early life.  What happens then in our teenage years?

Or when we become in our twenties? What happens then? Because we start to fly away from under the wings from our parents or caregivers. What do we do then? Of course, then we have like, okay, these are the traditions, but there's more to life. And this comes back, I think, to the drive or to the will to live, as Viktor Frankl was already saying, like, uh, We want to explore life, whatever life brings.

And that's a natural evolutionary curiosity. And when, of course, then we start to look at, okay, this is what our parents taught, but is there more to that? So of course, we start to look around. And because our parents, they were so much drilling on to us about the importance of the social and larger types of meanings.

So of course, what Generation X then did, is that became very materialistic, hedonistic think about self development. So the stereotype, I'm always thinking about the books from an author, such as for example when I talk about, uh, we show back, uh, who is a French author, very, very controversial.

Because he has some very weird political views. But his books, they grasp this sense of emptiness. Same as Dr. Skuplit in his book on Generation X. Same as that, where people explore life, travel far, and just have fun, and develop yourself, go to any kind of guru farms, or spiritual farms, etc. Great!  That's what people often do in a Teenage years, in the 20s, possibly still early 30s, that's, and often that is because we explore things that we didn't get from the tradition, that we didn't get from our upbringing, because we want to find out what's life about.

Whereas like, again, when we now look at the younger generations, what they do, They've seen this, how we've been doing this, and they're like, oh man, those materialistic or hedonistic stuff and, and, and, and that all the focus on the self.  Is that it? So what the young generation now is doing, they focus on the more social larger types of meanings.

Rarely in history have so many people been involved in social movements. Never. This is unique. We think it was the sixties. No, it's nowadays. And mainly young people. This is that sense of that awareness focus on social large types of meanings. So these are. Teenage years, 20s, beginning 30s. But then, and now we're getting into slowly the midlife because what's happening then because at the end of a 20s or something like that, then we start to develop certain habits, certain patterns we think about, okay, this is.

What we want the life to be about. Sometimes still rebelling against our parents or what our tradition that are given us, we're still exploring that.  We then go onto that. And of course, whatever we try out, it can become like a pattern, a habit. So at one point, some people may settle down with a family, with a partner, with kids, a certain job.

Other people, they may find a habit or a pattern in traveling across the globe and refusing a family  that can become a pattern or a cycle in itself. And that can all be fine and that can be very meaningful.  However, in our 30s and 40s, we've been often been living life in a certain way for a while and we've been trying it out, experimenting and we start to reflect, is this it?

And yes, possibly we conclude, yes, this is it. The family, my job, this is it, this is life, fine. And you affirm yourself and you continue as happy as you are. However, sometimes we start to wonder like, is that it? Really? And that's where sometimes some people get into like a midlife crisis or they start to ask the bigger questions.

Do I want to go into a different direction? So we can go back then to that curiosity that we had as a teenager. However, when we get into our thirties or forties, we are not the same as a teenager anymore. And being now myself in my midlife, I, I'm still struggling to admit that my energy levels are not the same anymore.

My body is starting to, sounds horrible, but starts to fall apart to some extent. I don't like to admit that, but it's the case. So I also need to have a little bit of a grief or a mourning and a kind of bereavement over. The fact that I had certain dreams as a kid or when I was young, I still had the idea that I could change the politics and possibly get involved in politics.

As an example, I can't. Yes, I can join a protest movement or whatever, but I won't be able to really do that because I didn't go for a political career. As an example, I didn't. So I need to come to terms with that. That I don't have the same opportunities anymore as I had as a kid or as a teenager.  It's also a loss of a naivety that not everything's possible in life, because of course, where we don't know life as a kid or as a teenager, we have naive ideas.

And I've now become more in touch with what's real, what's feasible and what's not. And then another very important topic, and we often don't like to talk about that, and we must. And that's why I'm bringing it up. As we become aware of death, that sounds heavy, but it's in the midlife that we become aware our parents start to die, at least grandparents, uh, possibly even some of our friends or even a partner, it's coming closer.

And that is scary. That's very scary. Because as I've already taught, we have this evolutionary will to live. We don't want to die. So how do we do this? How do we cope with this? And then often in response to that, in our midlife, when we are becoming more aware of, of, of our finitudes, then we are like, Oh, if I don't have so much time to live anymore, okay, I need to, I need to grasp all the opportunities I still have.

And we have to sense existential urgency. To now make the most of life as we can. And then sometimes you see in this midlife that people start to almost in an artificial way, try to get the most out of life, try out all things that now that they've not done. And in a fairly short period, try to get everything.

And so people then can get into like a crisis, like a manifest crisis. That's very awkward, but sometimes also more subtle, more under the skin, more under the surface. And I like Tara Menchman theory because that is like talking about how do we cope with death? So have a look at Tara Menchman theory for people interested.

Just Google that. And particularly the book worm at the core is a very good book about that. But Tara Menchman's theory is saying it's like the three ways we can, we can cope with death. And how we can find meaning in that context, still despite our finitude. In the first way, we can try to deny our deaths.

And for example, pretending to be young. And saying, no, no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm invulnerable and I'm fine. And I avoid big questions. And becoming a workaholic. Or being addicted to Netflix. And then that people who have a more longterm or like more rigid form of denial, for example, also the positive way of like wanting to leave a legacy, looking after your children, or my case, I don't have children, but I write my books.

That's my kind of my drive of, because I hope to overcome my finitudes. I hope to prevent that people forget about me, but writing books by and so it also involves, and this is the thing we also know, rigid conservatism. or toxic masculinity  that some people that can be a response to death and to a response and we know those people we know the names of like people like for example also also people like for example john peterson and many others who who stand for a more conservative perspective on life and if that's your thing it's your thing.

But at the same time, there's a little bit about the rigidity. I mean, we know from research, people fall back to a more conservative way of living life in response to being afraid of death. And so then there is a third way. So I'm saying like, we can have this more superficial way of denial and a more structural way to, to deny or cope with, with a death.

And then what we can also do is to be honest about it and say, well, I'm just honest about the fact that I'm dying, that my life is short, that I'm a mortal being. And I'm trying to be authentic towards myself and others. So I often describe this as a double awareness. I'm aware of my limits, but I'm also I'm aware of my opportunities to see what can I do with my decrease of freedom?

What can I do within this limited period of my life? How can I still make the most out of it with this realistic sense that I've developed in my in my midlife? How can I do this? And I can do that by, as I've already spoken about, by reflecting on the tradition that I grew up with. And also think about possibly also something good about it, and not all negative.

But also, I need to give up that mechanistic illusion that I can set life goals and realize them in a linear way possible. That's not how life completely works. And mainly it is at midlife that we need to start to listen to our critical intuition, as I've already said before. So it's about mindfulness.

So I'm looking at the inner journey and possibly looking at our shadow as Carl Gustav Jung calls that, but also being self compassionate towards who we are and our flaws.  Very often, as I've already said, at this point, we also start to realize that it's materialistic. Yes, that they are okay, but they're not truly fulfilling.

I start focusing on like the legacy I want to live that I want to leave something bigger, um, the social larger connections. And then in the last stage that may come after the midlife. So if we start, if we use a midlife to Come to terms to some extent with death, although we never can, can completely come to terms with that, I think, but a little bit more.

And also giving up on some of the mechanistic perspectives, the more superficial types of meanings when we, so we become more in touch with some things, use more critical intuitive approach, et cetera, while we go from there. So then in the next years that are going to come, and we know that when we're in the midlife, possibly already some of the kids have already. 

Left our nest. So if you have Children, you start, you may suffer from an empty nest syndrome, as they call that. So, and Children given a very important sense of social meaning in your life. And that's beautiful. And it can sense gives a sense of larger meaning of of wanted to help the next generation leave a better world. 

Sometimes we start them to you. Ask yourself a very honest question. Why did I really have children? Was it really wanting to,  to leave something behind or was it more almost like a narcissistic self defense mechanism to overcome my own fear of death. Like my idea that I'm a mortal being I will die and I want to have something left behind.

And preferably like a copy of me and we may come to terms that possibly there was a little bit narcissism, a little bit of selfishness in that. How do we come to terms with that? And also like, why did I put my children in this world where it's a huge climate crisis, cost of living crisis, wars that are going on in the world?

How do we deal with that? And what can I still do in my limited time to make things better as much as we can. So also I start then using that stage also that we start to, to look at like, okay, our children, they looked up to Anna, uh, that they looked up to us and they expected us to be an adult or grown up pretending that we know how to do life.

Well, then why we don't need to have that role anymore. It's not to think. Yes. For my children, I pretended I knew how to do this thing called life, but Yeah. And we often just  find things out on the go. We don't know. We were not born with like an instruction manual given at birth, like this is what life is about.

We don't know. So we're confronted with that again and, and, and in our midlife and after midlife. And so then we continue and the big questions come up again when we retire. And when we're confronted with our physical limitations, when we get ill when we develop illnesses, which are unavoidable when you get older,  when you develop cancer or cardiovascular disease or COVID.

But then again, what all my research is showing on what only mine, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm mainly like summarizing, reviewing a lot of research from all this. 

And they show time and time again, how a sense of meaning helps us to cope precisely. with those limitations that we're then confronted with.  It helps you to cope with, with death. It helps us to cope with the limitation of our body. It helps, it gives us a meaning, a purpose to get through in the same way as I already told as a kid, how my sense of meaning that I found in writing helped me through my horror.

Same way it will do that again when we are older and we get confronted and then when we near our death. We need to really become more in touch with taking stock and looking back like, okay, have I really lived my life in the way how I wanted and take stock of the positive things, but also come in touch and be honest about our guilt.

I regret like the story of that, of that all the men who told me like, yo, I, I got sucked into a habit, a pattern, and I regret that I've not lived life to the full. We need to come to touch with that. And so how do we, how do we deal with that existential crisis at the end of our life? So this is in a nutshell, or actually not so much in a nutshell,  how meaning evolves over our lives.

I would say.