What Gratitude and Grief Taught Me About Meaning

Gratefulness is the inner gesture of giving meaning to our life by receiving life as a gift. The deepest meaning of any given moment lies in the fact that it is given.

Br. David Steindl-Rast

Birth and death. These two events drive three questions that motivate all sorts of good and harmful behaviors: 

1. Why are we here? 
2. What does this all mean? 
3. What happens when we die? 

The underlying question for all three is this: will you recognize your life as a gift and choose to be grateful, or will you take the gift for granted and live without intention? The first choice offers a path to discovering meaning in every moment.

Meaning is defined as an “act of remembering.” Br. David Steindl-Rast says that what is meaningful is in service to that which is good. The key to meaning is remembering all that is good in your life and understanding how it carried you through to this moment, even in times of great difficulty.

Much of what you decide is good derives from your perspective and lived experience. This is why no one can tell you how to find meaning in your life when bad things happen. Discovering meaning is your work to do; it’s not as easy as following someone else’s instruction manual. To remain grounded in a grateful perspective and prevent yourself from becoming misaligned by outside influences, such as the media and ever-present propaganda on social media and elsewhere, daily practice is required.

Three Types of Meaning

During my twenty years of work with the dying and bereaved, I noticed some frequent themes, but the one most commonly shared was the search for meaning.

In my experience, there are three distinct approaches to meaning: chasing, making, and discovering. Each represents a different depth to understanding your life.

1. Chasing Meaning: The Shallow End

Chasing meaning is the lowest level of meaning. We chase meaning when we pursue materialistic things, whether ambitious careers, homes, or likes on social media. Chasing meaning is like holding a stick of butter on a hot summer day; it is temporary and can’t last.

As a hospice chaplain, many of my patients who reflected on their lives with me shared that their careers and prominence never loved them back. “They’re golden calves,” they said. They recounted wasted years and missed family milestones. These folks loved their Connecticut beach homes but now saw their kids fighting for them. It felt like an unraveling to them in their final hours.

2. Making Meaning: Deeper, but Still Temporary

If meaning simply needed to be made like a crafter weaving a basket, then we all could be taught exactly what to do and how to do it. We would only need to perfect the craft or follow the curriculum. But that’s not how deep, long-lasting meaning works.

While working with the bereaved, I promoted, like many, the idea of meaning-making. This was a mistake. Even though the waters get much deeper here, this too is temporary. For a widower, making meaning is quite empowering. When his beloved is taken from him, there is a sense that there is something he “can do” in the face of compounding losses. By taking action, he can make meaning by raising funds to support research for the disease that ailed his spouse. That is meaningful because it is good, but when the disease is not cured then his meaning-making can feel temporary and fleeting. It served its purpose for a moment, but the moment and, subsequently, its meaning will likely pass.

3. Discovering Meaning: The Deepest Understanding

When you chase and make meaning you easily miss what is already at your front door. Gratitude taught me that meaning is discovered.

This meaning is rooted in knowing your life is a gift. When your orientation to life is gratefulness, you are empowered to discover meaning like an archaeologist unearthing bones. When you no longer chase or work hard to create meaning, you perceive everything differently by looking at your life, with all of its joys and challenges, with an openness that leads to the discovery of meaning. It is always there, not something you have to learn to chase or make. It simply unfolds within your life as your life unfolds. And it remains there to be rediscovered in hindsight.

For the dying who chased meaning throughout their life, they would be wise to look back and observe the meaning that was there all along. And for the widower whose deeds were good, while he may have missed much of what was offered to him in the form of love from family, neighbors, friends, and unexpected strangers who were carrying him tenderly into his new normal as he frantically raced to raise funds for research, he can still receive what was given to him.

Purpose and the Experience of Meaning

The Holocaust survivor and scholar Victor Frankl said, “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.” We should not label suffering as a blessing or a gift. It seldom is such a thing. But that does not require meaning to be absent from it. Meaning is present in joy and in sorrow. It is your work to discover it within your life.

In my life, I have learned that meaning requires me to attune to my life by observing it with care and then listening. This in turn leads to purpose – what I am called and invited to do at any given moment, whether sitting a little longer at a deathbed, embracing my vulnerabilities so that someone has the courage to embrace theirs, or tending a frail relationship. I have found that meaning and purpose go hand-in-hand – like the call-and-repeat of a spiritual hymn – they speak to each other in times of despair and moments with abundant possibilities. 

To recap, meaning can be experienced in three ways:

1. You can recognize it in hindsight
2. You can discover it in the present moment
3. You can live a life of purpose, which grounds you in meaning

This makes meaning:

• Reflective: Remember where it existed in the past
• Active: Discover it in the present
• Organic: Respond to your life with intention

By moving beyond chasing and making meaning to discovering it, we open ourselves to a deeper, more fulfilling understanding of the purpose of life and our place within it.

Photo by Robert Lukeman

Joe Primo, Grateful Living

Joe Primo is the CEO of Grateful Living. He is a passionate speaker and community-builder whose accomplishments made him a leading voice on resilience and adversity. Gratefulness for life, he believes, is foundational to discovering meaning and the only response that is big enough and appropriate for the plot twists, delights, surprises, and devastation we encounter along the way. A student of our founder since his studies at Yale Divinity School, Joe is committed to advancing our global movement and making the transformational practice of grateful living both accessible to all and integral to communities and places of belonging. His TED talk, “Grief is Good,” reframed the grief paradigm as a responsive resource. He is the author of “What Do We Tell the Children? Talking to Kids About Death and Dying” and numerous articles.

See more content by Joe Primo, Grateful Living →