This does not suggest that people have to be anxious about whether or not their actions always contribute optimally towards worthwhile life goals. Most everyday human actions are not connected to the fulfillment of ideals or to the creation of a desired legacy. In a complex world it is difficult to make predictions about the outcomes of performance. Sometimes, as Kazez (2007) suggests, the best we can hope for as we engage in our daily tasks in life is to be just ‘good enough’. She points out that ‘our lives would seem far less interesting if it were really possible to approach them with an instruction manual’ (pp. 157-158). This is the case even in important roles such as that of being parents, who, Winnicott (1971) thought, had to be just ‘good enough’. Part of human socialization involves realizing that we are probably capable of determining what actions to take to achieve important goals in life, without becoming anxious or obsessive about it.
The literature reviewed for this chapter suggests that meaning is composed of more than worthwhile goals or a mission in life. It also has a function of giving one an experience of coherence and continuity, order, inner harmony, value, and the ability to make choices and to act (Dwyer, Nordenfelt, & Ternestdt, 2008; Fleer, Hoekstra, Sleijfer et al., 2006; Jim & Andersen, 2007; Thompson, 2007). The perception of coherence as a source of meaning includes being aware of reminiscence, through which people use their past experiences to shape a desired future. People often find value in relating the past to their children and grandchildren, thus satisfying the curiosity of younger generations about earlier times (Vincent, 1981). The activity of describing the past contributes to the future coherence of society by sustaining cultural and spiritual knowledge.
Chodorow (1989, 1978) suggests that the shape and form given to this transmission of cultural and spiritual values may offer differing forms of continuity among the genders – men are encouraged as boys to be independent, while women as girls are encouraged to be interdependent. These differences are reflected in the continuous and unbroken phylogenetic relationships between mothers and their daughters, whereas those between fathers and sons are often disrupted. These different patterns of coherence result in gendered approaches to making sense of the world. Individual affirmation is experienced through interdependence in the case of women and through independence by conquest and the exercise of power over others in the case of men. The male oriented social structure of dominance has been a result of valuing of independence and conquest rather than interdependence, which is a priority for women (Irigaray, 1993). The neutral individual depicted in philosophy or in the desexualized language of non-sexism thus still remains an expression of male identity in a society in which women’s way of being in the world is not fully acknowledged.
Occupational therapists and occupational scientists are members of a professional and academic community composed predominantly of women. For the profession of occupational therapy to recognize a critical notion of meaning, the influence of its strongly gendered constituency has to be addressed. As Frank (1992) noted in her exploration of the feminist history of occupational therapy, while women have felt empowered in the profession, they have also maintained a narrow cultural base represented by white middle class women’s perspective, a group whose expression of meaning may reflect a certain degree of class privilege. The profession has had to struggle for its objectives and resources in the male ordered hegemonies of health care (Pollard & Walsh, 2000). However, in order to survive it has to engage with clients in a diverse society which presents a wider range of cultural meanings and understandings of occupation (Sakellariou & Pollard, 2008). While occupational therapy practice is supposed to focus on clients’ needs, its feminine cultural perspective may not reflect the lived experiences of males with disabilities (Block et al, 2012; Sakellariou & Pollard, 2012), whose needs (in the areas of productivity, self-care, social participation, intimacy, etc.) are different from those of female clients. Occupational therapists have to attract and support the development of a much wider professional membership, and a great variety of tools and approaches to work equally and holistically with all clients. As a source of underpinning theory and evidence for occupation, occupational science has a similar task of investigating the diverse phenomena of meaning in doing.
According to Peterson (2000), there are three levels of meaning:
1. meaning of the determined world which arises out of the human tendency to simplify reality so that it can be comprehended;
2. meaning related to novelty, which comes out of fulfillment of human curiosity and need to explore; and
3. meaning arising out of the interaction between determined world and satisfaction of curiosity and need to explore, which is one of the factors involved in comprehending determined world to enhance human survival.
Meaningfulness as a function of one’s relationship with God, soul, or both
In Diane’s account at the beginning of the book, she placed a great deal of importance on religious interpretations of life meaning. As mentioned earlier, most human cultures maintain a significant concern with spiritual activities carried out by individuals. Many people perceive meaning to be connected to a relationship with a higher power such as God [also referred to as ‘God-centered meaning’] or to one’s soul [also referred to as ‘soul-centered meaning’] (Metz, 2007). The God-centered view is based on the notion that meaning results from fulfilling God’s purpose or working within God’s plan for the universe. Gordon (1983) argued that God endows us with meaning in the same way that artists breathe meaning into their creations. Indeed adherents of most religions suggest that their gods were directly involved in the creation of the world. It follows that for people holding such beliefs, God is necessary for meaning because in their perception, individual human lives are finite and therefore cannot be meaningful by themselves (Nozick, 1989, 1981).
In most Western traditions, finiteness (or mortality) denotes imperfection, a state which lacks meaning, and therefore, in many religious systems doing good deeds is considered a public responsibility, a way of striving for the perfection of immortality in heaven. God’s perfection and the extended notion of this perfection to heaven are infinite sources of meaning to humans’ finite lives. Christians often presume that by living well they can attain perfection in an afterlife through admission into heaven, although they cannot assume perfection in their finite lives. Thus there is a distinction between what is cosmically meaningful because it is infinite and what is fleetingly meaningful because it is finite.
In some Judeo Christian and Islamic perspectives, perfection is a state that is beyond human comprehension; there can be no attribution of human values to God, since God is beyond human understanding (Jones, 1984). In Buddhism, nirvana is a state of perfection through enlightenment, i.e. a state of understanding that should eventually lead to loss of separate individuality and spiritual merging with a primordial consciousness. In this system of thought, perfection occurs by relinquishing aspects of the self in order to attain enlightenment by merging with the ultimate cosmic consciousness (Suzuki, 1969; Trungpa, 1973)
In many religions, human lives are understood to be equally meaningful