Actions & Meaning: Why Everything We Do Matters
Putting popcorn in the microwave makes me a good man. If your initial thoughts on this statement are something to the effect of “Okay, that seems absurd” or “Wow! Setting the bar kinda low!”, then your response is typical of most responses I get when I make that declaration. Occasionally, I will get a response of genuine curiosity, but it’s rare. By now, you realize there must be some point I’m eventually getting at. The point is that everything we do matters. Therefore, I will attempt to illuminate why this is an important notion to consider seriously and why we should incorporate it into our daily lives.
There are six basic human emotions: joy, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. There is also a possible seventh basic emotion—contempt. These basic emotions have a purpose in the sense that they are part of an evolutionary feedback system that helps us understand our position in the world and our orientation. In other words, if we feel positive emotions, it is because we are moving towards a desirable future. On the contrary, if we feel negative emotions, it is because we are moving towards—or existing in—an undesirable life. An interesting and notable takeaway from these basic emotions is that almost all of them are negative. The only positive ones are joy and surprise, and even surprise can be negative depending on the context of the situation. Therefore, we have a universal proclivity to view and experience the world through a rather negative framework. Again, there is a good reason for this. Still, it is essential to understand that our default orientation is negativity—that is, until we have successfully transformed our circumstances into positive experiences. Nevertheless, our starting point is primarily negative.
Having established that our default experiences are primarily sourced in negative emotions, let us explore why that matters. First, we must understand that a meaningful life is created through our actions in the world and the orientations from which they are experienced. Meaning is derived from our experiences when our attitudes indicate a desire to move towards fulfillment and purpose. In other words, we must make associations with our actions in the present and how they are connected with other important aspects of our lives. This is notable because of the collective weight of the positive and negative emotions of our experiences. The more positive experiences we have, the more likely we will derive meaning from them. The more negative experiences we have, the more likely our lives will become meaningless. Everything we do matters. We have perhaps arrived at a problem statement: the default of human nature is to experience the world through negative emotions; therefore, our proclivity toward a meaningless life is stronger than our proclivity toward meaning.
How does this concept occur in a practical sense? First, we must understand the significance of having a default orientation. We are almost always more of a threat to lean too far to the default end of the spectrum than the other side. Therefore, while there may be value in having a default of negative emotions, we are at a greater risk of missing out on the value of positive emotions than having too many of them—although that is technically possible. Each action we take in life moves us towards meaning or meaninglessness. There is no middle ground! Hence, there are two progressions:
Gratitude > Meaning > Purpose
Triviality > Cynicism > Nihilism
Perhaps, one of the most undetectable forks in the road is the direction that the smallest, most trivial decisions take us. Each action either directs us down a path whose subsequent actions hold meaningful implications or a path whose subsequent actions are, at best, a means to an end or, worse, seen as trivial. To see the meaningful implications is to make the connections between the smallest implementable actions and how it ultimately leads to the highest aim. This is the progression of Gratitude > Meaning > Purpose. On the other hand, to see our actions only as “one more damn thing I have to do” leads down a path that only gets darker. This is the progression of Triviality > Cynicism > Nihilism.
Back to putting popcorn in the microwave making me a good man. Most people automatically assume an attitude of triviality or even cynicism towards that statement. But what if I said that putting popcorn in the microwave is associated with sharing popcorn with my daughter? Would it then seem a little more meaningful? And what if I told you that sharing popcorn with my daughter was associated with movie night? And that movie was an aspect of quality time with my daughter. And quality time is an aspect of being a father, which is a role I play as a man. In this sense, you can see the meaningful implications from the small implementable action (putting popcorn in the microwave) to a broader, higher aim of being a good man. There is a direct line from each aspect of the ideas that connect the smallest implementable action to a meaningful life. This is made possible by practicing gratitude for everything we do because it creates meaningful associations with them, ultimately leading to a deepened sense of purpose.
However, suppose I merely see the action of putting popcorn in the microwave as something trivial (a means to an end or one more damn thing we have to do). In that case, there will be no meaningful association between that and sharing popcorn with my daughter. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of not making a meaningful association between sharing popcorn and the meaningful idea of movie night. As this progression continues, there will be no direct lines from each aspect of the ideas that connect the smallest implementable action to a meaningful life. We may still take the same actions, but they will occur as singular actions and aspects that are disconnected from everything else. This is meaninglessness. And this is just one action. As our attitudes of triviality carry over into other aspects of our lives, we gradually become more cyclical, which assumes the narrative of “it’s dumb that I even have to do this in the first place.” And this is a real thing! Eventually, this progresses from cynicism to nihilism, which assumes the narrative of “what does it matter?”. And that is not good!
Will you transcend your temptation to walk that dark path by practicing the virtue of gratitude? Will you let yourself be moved by all the stress and heaviness of your experiences, and do so while remaining grateful? In the book, Beyond Order (Rule XII: Be Grateful In Spite of your Suffering), Jordan Peterson states, “It is not as if the suffering and betrayal, the catastrophes, are of insufficient gravity to make bitterness a real option…The temptation to become embittered is great and real.” We must consider our own attitudes of triviality and how it makes us bitter and cynical. That is not effective. It is not meaningful. Peterson continues, “Despite the fact that the world is a very dark place…we see in each other a unique blend of actuality and possibility that is a kind of miracle…perhaps it is active love that aims at its betterment.” Be grateful in spite of the seemingly trivial nature of life, and by all means, strive to see the beauty in everything you do.
