Post-Grad Life: How Do I Find Meaning?
Do As I Say, Not As I Do is an advice column designed to help you navigate any situation in life that you’re dealing with, and hopefully help others who find themselves in a similar situation. All advice is purely opinion based on my experience, and I am in no capacity a trained professional. If you’re struggling with your mental health, please seek out professional help, and reach out to Samaritans in the UK, or NAMI in the US. To ask me a question, fill out the form here.
I'm looking to find some more meaning in my life... throughout school we always had a billion things we were involved with to funnel our energy into but now it's mostly we work and then we go out... I want to get involved with something sort of “extracurricular” but I don't know what or really how to go about finding something. Any advice?
-Lolly
I’ve been thinking about this one, Lolly, and here’s what I got. In school and university especially, we get used to general “busyness” and for me that’s the root of your problem. It’s just the nature of life that there are peaks and valleys, lulls and upheavals. So before I make suggestions for how to find a hobby that suits you, I’m going to tell you what you don’t want to hear: in order to find more meaning, you’re going to have to do the dirty work. Get real comfortable with yourself. Start with introspection, start with spending time with yourself. That can look a lot of different ways: it might be through meditation (yes, this is my solution to everything), through reading books or going for walks in the park, but it comes down to finding a way to be at peace with not being constantly bombarded with stimuli. That’s the first step. Busyness doesn’t equal fulfilment; it’s just something that keeps us from having to think about what gives our life meaning.
Now once you’ve got down to this business of “being” rather than nonstop “doing,” you can start adding on. Like, if you were a computer, you would have to make sure your software was up to date and maybe do a virus scan before you started downloading loads of apps, ya know what I mean? So, OK, once your software is all up and running, now you’ve got space for all those extracurriculars. Finding an activity that suits you might also start with some introspection: what do you enjoy doing? What did you always wish you had time to do when you were super busy in school? If you have absolutely no idea, you could look to your friends, see what they do in their free time and ask if you can join them at their next salsa class, or their life drawing workshop.
“Busyness doesn’t equal fulfilment.”
When you have a vague idea of what you might like to do, it’s time to get browsing. Meetup has thousands and thousands of groups that meet to partake in every activity under the sun, and I cannot recommend it enough. Eventbrite lists events in your area by category, as does Facebook. Or, as I’m sure you could figure out for yourself, you could just have a good old-fashioned google. “Bird watching near me.” “Book club Brooklyn.” You get the picture.
Another fairly infallible way to find meaning is to volunteer your time for a cause that you care about. If you’re in the UK, you can try this website to find an org that speaks to you, or again try googling. Helping others gives you purpose, and if there’s an issue out there that really gets you riled up, it can feel good to chip away at it in whatever small way you can.
If you’re maybe not feeling something so social, there are plenty of hobbies you could pick up from the comfort of your own home: start a blog, teach yourself something on YouTube, learn a new skill on Skillshare, LinkedIn or Duolingo. Ultimately, it’s going to be about trying a bunch of stuff — some of it will stick, and some of it won’t, but to speak in cliché upon cliché, you won’t know until you try. Hope this helps, babe. If you need anything else, you know where to find me.
-Iris
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