The first book I am working through in my sabbatical is The Meaning of Your Life by Arthur Brooks. [1] I’ve almost finished reading it and will definitely reread it. I also commend it to you. Like many, Brooks begins by noting the prevalence of “depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and anger …” (3) in modern society. In his own research, he found a direct linkage between the amount of time spent online, and depression and anxiety. “As a general rule, the more time you spend looking at your phone, the more depressed, lonely, and anxious you will become.” (5) Many of those he studied “said that their life was busy but not meaningful.” (13) They didn’t know the meaning of their life. Their addiction to being online blocked their ability to ponder the deeper issues of life.
Brooks proposes that there are three things that give meaning to life. He writes:
The first element of meaning is coherence, or how the events of your life fit together. This is an understanding that things happen in your life for a reason. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can fit everything into your narrative the moment it happens. Sometimes things still seem to come out of left field—nasty surprises still occur, and it doesn’t seem to make sense when someone you love gets sick or you have an ugly breakup you didn’t expect. But you usually are able to make sense of things afterward, so you have faith that you eventually will, even when life feels chaotic. (26)
The second element of life’s meaning is purpose, which is the existence of goals and direction in your life. This is the belief that you are alive in order to do something. Think of purpose as the map of your life, telling you where you are in your journey and where you want to go. Your map can change as your destination changes throughout life, but you always need one. Without it, your journey becomes a big problem, just as any trip would become a problem if you didn’t know where you were and didn’t know where you wanted to go. (27)
The third element of meaning is significance. This refers to the inherent value of your life to yourself and, even more important, to others. To be significant doesn’t mean that when you die, you will have a long obituary in The New York Times or a street named after you in your hometown. It simply means that the world would be worse for someone you love if you didn’t exist. (28)
As I looked at Brooks’ three sources for the meaning of life, I thought of how the Christian faith provides answers for them.
Coherence—Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). When we are in Christ, He draws together the various details of our life and makes them part of the story that is our life. This knowledge of God’s authoring of our life enables Joseph to say “you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. . .” (Genesis 50:20a). Even if tough and painful things happen to us, we believe that God will turn those events into redemptive events as our story unfolds. The details of our lives are not meaningless and random. We will see that the Divine Author has a plan and a purpose for all that happens to us.
Purpose—From the beginning humankind was tasked to be God’s agents to care for His creation (Genesis 1:28). The resurrected Christ tells His disciples that as the Father has sent Him, so He in turn sends His disciples into the world (John 20:21). Our life has purpose because our first vocation is to be God’s representatives in the world. In this calling we preach the gospel, we care for His creation, we speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves, we feed the hungry, we are peacemakers, etc. There is no retirement for this calling. We will always have purpose because we will always be God’s agents in the world.
Significance—We remember that when Jesus was baptised, God the Father announced that Jesus was His son and that He was well pleased with Him (Matthew 3:16, 17). As many have noted, this was before He began His public ministry and years before His sacrifice on the Cross. Jesus was beloved by the Father because He was His child. As Christians, we too are children of God (Galatians 3:26) and therefore also loved by God. We have significance because God loves us. He created us, Jesus died for our sins, in our salvation He adopted us as His children, He has enlisted us to be part of His mission, and He has in store for us new heavens and a new earth for eternity. We are significant.
One of my goals for my sabbatical is to read and reflect on how we can help our Third Agers (60 and beyond) discover/rediscover vocation. I thought that while Brooks’ three sources of meaning would be very helpful guides for people of all age groups, they would be especially useful for seniors and elders.
First, the sources of meaning reinforce the fact that seniors/elders still have a part to play in God’s plans. They may retire from a “9–5” job but they don’t retire from being agents of God’s work in the world. While energy levels may wane, elders will bring more wisdom from lived experience into their vocation.
Next, the fact that they still have a role to play in God’s plans is a reminder that they are still significant, not because of their work but because they are children of the living God. No one can take away that source of their significance no matter how the world may view them.
Third, as they grow older they will have more of their story to look back on—more lessons to learn from, more clues about their vocation, and a growing sense of their self-worth. A life-review exercise will be very useful to get a sense of the meaning of their lives and provide guidance as to their personal life mission.
I am looking forward to reflecting more on these topics to see if I can be of more help to my peers, but of course this reflection is, first and foremost, for myself as I journey on in my 70s.
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[1] New York, NY: Portfolio, 2026