Finishing the story: how narratives affect the ways we live and think
Which narratives are influencing our beliefs about what is meaningful? Is it possible to inspect and uncover them?
“I don’t think life has meaning. How could life have one? There’s so much going on. We try to pick at coincidence and patterns, but there’s just so much. While we might interpret it one way, the next person might interpret it an another. You see people put a lot of weight on different things. Someone reads something and it resonates with them.”
- Priya (India/USA), 34, Kyoto
There are different reasons why someone believes life is or is not meaningful. Before I began formally researching the topic, there was a period in my life where I believed life did not have meaning. Now I hold no definitive beliefs on an “ultimate” meaning to life, but I also think there's a better, albeit subtle, series of questions to ask about the subject. In my years researching the topic, I believe what we should really ask ourselves begins with, “How are we thinking about meaning? And how does this affect us?” These powerful questions reveal what stories we tell ourselves. These stories affect not only our individual lives, but also shapes our relationships, with ourselves, with others, and the world as a whole.
How we think about meaning is contained either within the narratives we tell ourselves or the narratives themselves are a result of how we think about meaning. These narratives, or stories, inform the way we think about the world and our individual and collective place in it. There tend to be two popular opposing narratives, with variations in-between. The first is a narrative of a random, chaotic, and disorganized universe – one where our existence is purely incidental, with no “bigger” reason for why we’re or “why” for anything else in the world. We simply are and things simply exist. In stark contrast, the other narrative emphasizes the fact that our universe has recognizable, recurring patterns and structures – going so far as to say our own individual lives might have patterns and structures that mean something. In this view, our existence cannot be a cosmic accident. Our lives, and our existence have some significance. Both narratives have deeply appealing elements. If we follow the first narrative’s route of randomness, there is a pull to believe that life has no meaning; if we follow the second narrative’s route of significance, there is a persisting itch to uncover why we must exist.
The distinction between narrative and meaning itself is not perfectly clear. There are times when narratives influence our approach to the meaning of life. For instance, when I believed the narrative of total randomness and chaos I came to believe life had no meaning and no possible meaning, or “nihilism.” And yet, when I believed the other polarity that every little thing happened for a reason and carried significance, I was never able to exist or appreciate a thing for what it was, constantly trying to piece together some significance of every experience.
What matters isn’t which narrative is true, but which one we believe to be true, because what we believe is true that shapes our conscious and unconscious beliefs. Once we move past assuming one of these narratives must be correct, we can better appreciate what many of us miss: these poles are an oversimplification. We can carry perspectives and narratives in-between these poles, in a way that helps life feel both invigorating and breathtaking. My intention through my conversations was to learn how people thought about meaning and through this, I learned what narratives people told themselves around their approaches to meaning. I was curious about and asked questions to learn how people believed their approaches affected their wellbeing, and how people perceived their narratives would affect them during the inevitable challenges and circumstances that life brings.
“If life doesn’t have meaning then what are we here for? It doesn’t make sense for us to exist without meaning.”
- Sheryl (Singapore), 21, Seoul
“I think there’s no original meaning but it’s something individual use to explain things to themselves.”
-Leon, 24, Hong Kong
Narratives and meaning also influence one another. They give shape to how we perceive ourselves and our identities, the world around us, and how we interact in and with the world. As a reminder from our previous post, a Meaning of Life (MOL) includes many things, including those that give someone a sense of purpose, bring a feeling of understanding to our existence in the context of the universe, and inspire resiliency in the face of adversity. They are the central things we use to organize our identity, our values and motivations, (the bulk of) our time and efforts, and the act of living itself.
During the period of time when I thought lift had no meaning, I tried to embrace this nihilism, convincing myself that it was not only the more “accurate way” of viewing the universe, but that I was better for having adopted this view. Admittedly and unexpectedly, there can be cynical pleasure in responding to something unfortunate with a “well, nothing matters anyway.”
It’s curious how this happens. There are times when we care so intensely about an outcome that the thought of it not working out the way we hoped feels devastating. The job interview, the project, the date – when it’s something we can attach a lot of significance to, it can fill us with paralyzing anxiety and avoidance, sometimes perfectionism. In these moments, the thought of Well nothing matters anyway can be a freeing relief in response to something that feels maybe too important or too meaningful. Nothing matters anyways may start to get repeated as a self-soothing response if something doesn’t go our way. Business meeting didn’t go our way? An exam or date didn’t go our way? Does it matter? No, nothing does. An interesting exercise is to observe what effect this narrative has when things continue to not go our way – and also, if in sharp contrast, they begin to do begin to go our way.
If we treat meaninglessness like a panacea or even a temporary balm, it can quickly reveal itself to instead be a destructive narcotic. A perspective of general nihilism tends to not remain isolated. You can’t easily switch from telling yourself nothing matters in response to the undesired outcomes to telling yourself things do matter in response to the desired outcomes. When we repeat to ourselves nothing matters enough times, we begin to believe it. This belief robs us of the ability to discern what matters from what doesn’t. It robs us the chance to learn from outcomes that don’t go our way and from how to navigate our anxieties around things that matter to us. It can get to the point where even positive outcomes feel dulled due to the inability to acknowledge any meaningfulness.
When meaninglessness gets adopted as our Meaning of Life (MOL), it comes with detrimental mental and physical health outcomes. To someone whose life feels full of meaning and purpose, this experience might feel puzzling and difficult to understand. In my own life and from the conversations I’ve shared, the nihilistic narrative of meaninglessness sometimes provides an immediate sense of release from overwhelming burdens. However, this initial catharsis shifts into depression, loneliness, and frustration. During my nihilistic period, I found myself retreating to feelings of despair, isolation, and irritation. When your responsibilities have lost meaningfulness, you question the purpose of your days. You might even go so far as to question if the people around you – and the stories they tell themselves – matter. And unfortunately, when you start to tell yourself that nothing matters, you begin to question if you matter.
“Hold on,” someone might caution. What significance can any job interview, project, date, or daily chores and routines have in the grand scheme of things? My answer is that we can’t truly know what impacts our actions will have on that scale of things, but the answer is not simply zero. However, to get a more relevant answer, we have to focus on the scale of our own lives, the lives of those around us, and our fellow human beings. In this context, our actions do matter. And this leads us to deeper questions: what things should we care about – and why?
“There’s nothing meaningful at the beginning. We are not in a life with inherent meaning, you have to find something to make it interesting. That could be a lot of things. One meaning of life could be to be moral or good to people. Other people could think it is to learn a lot, or maybe give something to their children. Everyone needs to find meaning to be satisfied with their life at the end.”
- Camille (France), 26, Seoul
Here, it might be useful to introduce the idea of existentialism (different from the word “existential”). Existentialism is the word philosophers use to describe a stance that life can have meaning on a personal level, but that an individual chooses that meaning for themselves from a range of possibilities. Without ever using words like “existentialism” or “meaning,” people still pick all sorts of things as existential source(s) of meaning. These could be artistic or creative pursuits, material comforts, professional success, a nuclear family, worldly pleasure, charity and aid, acquiring knowledge and making scientific discoveries, and many more.
So when it comes to a single job interview or date – few of us really think that these individual events give our lives existential meaning. Rather, we think the outcome – a job, lifestyle, relationship, or family – will. The noteworthy insight is that our stated or unstated expectations of what will be meaningful, and the actions we take in pursuit of them, reflect the stories we tell ourselves about the world and our role in it. However, if we decide to tell ourselves different stories, our expectations of meaning – and our actions – would change. In turn, the level of meaning assigned to a job, relationship, responsibility, or even to broader values and priorities might also change. And this brings up a critical question: if we have agency over these narratives, then how do we decide which ones to adopt?
The narratives we adopt the most are the ones that spread most easily through our culture. Contemporary cultural narratives spread via many forms: literature, music, movies, and even social media. However, cultural narratives have long been integrated into human history, with systems as simple as familial and peer influences, traditions, and rituals. There are also influences to culture that are sometimes thought of as tangential to culture, such as political and economic structures. Citizens of two different countries can have very different narratives of what is meaningful as mediated by their political and economic participation. There are also biological and evolutionary narratives we decide to listen to varying degrees: mating, reproduction, accumulating resources, social bonds, and others.
These narratives are all mutable. Even with biological evolutionary survival goals, we see time and again, people taking contrary actions. We die for causes, forgo reproductive opportunities, and sacrifice our health. Some might make the argument that our evolutionary goals shift in these situations to adapt to new social and cultural environments. In either case, the natural line of question becomes, “what is truly an inescapable biological imperative and what is the function of social transmission?” It’s probably impossible to know the answer for all our desires. Going even further, can we determine which narratives we’re bonded to and which ones we have the freedom to shape and control? While there’s no clear answers to these questions, there is a line of inquiry we benefit from investigating: are there narratives, or even approaches to meaning, that would be beneficial to us as individuals, as societies, or even as a species?
In order to understand how these narratives influence us, we tend to introspect. There’s a kind of introspection I’ve noticed a few people (myself included) take when they are either contemplating or experiencing a major life transition. I’ve found this type of introspection to be particularly fascinating because it’s seen either dutiful or as rumination. During this, it seems people are trying to uncover which parts of their narratives “feel” more honest and which “feel” inauthentic and adopted through social or cultural influence. Occasionally, we simply examine the narrative to see if it serves any value. There might be certain career, family, relationship, or personal expectations that we no longer identify with. They might actually be holding us back from the self-actualized, authentic versions of ourselves we desire to be. This type of introspection can be a productive undertaking, if it allows us to recognize which ideas of meaning we have adopted into our narratives and determine if we want to continue to carry these.
While often beneficial, we should recognize two immediate limitations.
For one, it’s impossible to truly uncover all the narratives that are “authentic” to ourselves versus which ones we’ve adopted. The idea of an “authentic” narrative uninfluenced by external factors itself might be an illusion. And even if these “authentic” narratives exist, it may be impossible to actually uncover them. When we enter periods of introspection, there are some narratives we treat as sacred and refuse to question. For these, we often believe that if we shed them, we may lose the identities and stories that tie us to some sense of reality. This is reasonable. After all, truly discarding all prior narratives can make us feel close to simple danger, or even to nihilistic sentiments of emptiness and nothing being true. Yet at the same time, these defense mechanisms can inhibit the true value of introspection, since the person would fail to critically reflect on narratives that may be arbitrarily influencing them. As a result, they may not make changes that would be crucial in living authentically meaningful lives, instead only making changes to fit into predetermined goals. If the introspection is done well and if those goals are really what we’d find fulfilling, then we’d likely return to them, even more strongly after this intellectual stress test. And if these aren’t the goals that we’d really find fulfilling, that means immediate more painful change will ultimately result in less regret and long-term dissatisfaction, unless the change itself was severely misguided. But the aversion to pain and the possible nihilism stops us from this initial questioning, and the lack of general questioning inhibits us to carry this questioning out skillfully without being misguided. Lastly and crucially, in the process of this type of reflection, we should remind ourselves of inherent inner self worth. Remembering our self-worth avoids some of the dangers of nihilistic questioning that calls into question if our lives have meaning. And this foundation can help us more assuredly investigate and build a sense of meaning that feels personally resonant and compelling.
These themes and explorations are not just interesting, they are tied inextricably to what it means to be human. They are tied to desires of wanting a coherent understanding of the world we can navigate. Tangibly, they affect our general wellbeing, life satisfaction, and overall flourishing. Following certain narratives and approaches to meaning can make the difference between cognitive states of depression, states of baseline functioning, and even states of flourishing. The Net Project is not aiming to explore these ideas for the sake of intellectual thought experiments, nor for the sake of publishing psychology or philosophy research that might have a real-world impact years later, if at all. We don’t believe that building a meaningful and flourishing world shouldn’t only be a theoretical and intellectual exercise. We’re actively pursuing how to have demonstrable impact that will help people skillfully investigate and create narratives that will help them live meaningful and flourishing lives. We’re excited to continue iterating and sharing our work with more and more people.
Narrative affects all of us; share this article with someone to learn about what narratives they believe. You can stay updated below. If you want to get involved to join our team or help to fund our 501(c)(3), reach out to us at future@netproject.org.
Dictionary
Narratives: Used here, are stories that inform the way we think about the world and our individual and collective place in it
Existentialism: The word philosophers use to describe a stance that life can have meaning on a personal level, but that an individual chooses that meaning for themselves from a range of possibilities.
Updated Jan 15, 2025 to improve clarity and refine explanations. The original meaning has not been changed.
