Yesterday I was talking to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jelazakazone about Viktor Frankl and his book, Man's Search for Meaning. We talked about a lot of things like imposter syndrome and creating crafts and dis/ability and trauma/bullying and it was really a very, very good discussion. (Thanks, jelazakazone!)
Anyway, I was thinking about how I find meaning in my life. What is its purpose? I used to think that I was going to save the world, somehow; I always planned to do Peace Corps until health got in the way. Dedicate myself to others, yadda yadda, which isn't healthy unless you have really good boundaries. It's a trap our society creates and reveres. A false pedestal (but then aren't all pedestals?)
For awhile I wanted to leave my mark on the world as a historian, perhaps by writing an important paper or creating an important bit of research. Once I started immersing myself in African/African Diaspora History, I wanted people to know about injustices that happened in the "Global South", which...burned me out. Again, an unsustainable goal without really good boundaries, but really the boundary is flawed because it all rests on other people knowing...and I had all this knowledge of past injustices burning inside me but it felt like there was nothing I could do with all this energy.
Right now I think my meaning is something along the lines of "create crafts and beauty and hopefully help people stay warm in the process, and help me stay healthy/sane through my creative outlets". -ish. I'm still refining, which is part of the "search" part.
( content note: f*ck yeah, healing from trauma )
So there.
jelazakazone about Viktor Frankl and his book, Man's Search for Meaning. We talked about a lot of things like imposter syndrome and creating crafts and dis/ability and trauma/bullying and it was really a very, very good discussion. (Thanks, jelazakazone!)Anyway, I was thinking about how I find meaning in my life. What is its purpose? I used to think that I was going to save the world, somehow; I always planned to do Peace Corps until health got in the way. Dedicate myself to others, yadda yadda, which isn't healthy unless you have really good boundaries. It's a trap our society creates and reveres. A false pedestal (but then aren't all pedestals?)
For awhile I wanted to leave my mark on the world as a historian, perhaps by writing an important paper or creating an important bit of research. Once I started immersing myself in African/African Diaspora History, I wanted people to know about injustices that happened in the "Global South", which...burned me out. Again, an unsustainable goal without really good boundaries, but really the boundary is flawed because it all rests on other people knowing...and I had all this knowledge of past injustices burning inside me but it felt like there was nothing I could do with all this energy.
Right now I think my meaning is something along the lines of "create crafts and beauty and hopefully help people stay warm in the process, and help me stay healthy/sane through my creative outlets". -ish. I'm still refining, which is part of the "search" part.
( content note: f*ck yeah, healing from trauma )So there.
