10.1177/0022167802238816 ARTICLEThe Meaning of LifeRichard T. Kinnier et al.
WHAT EMINENT PEOPLE HAVE SAIDABOUT THE MEANING OF LIFE
RICHARD T. KINNIER is a professor of counseling psychology at ArizonaState University (ASU). His research interests include topics related tovalues and the meaning of life. He recently wrote a book titled The Point ofIt All. In it the meaning of life is finally revealed.
JERRY L. KERNES is a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology atASU and is currently an intern at California State University at LongBeach. His interests include values and meaning-in-life issues.
NANCY E. TRIBBENSEE is a doctoral student in counseling psychologyat ASU. Her research interests include topics related to values, the mean-ing of life, and the relationship between physical and psychological con-cerns. She is currently serving as deputy general counsel for ASU.
CHRISTINA M. VAN PUYMBROECK is a doctoral candidate in counsel-ing psychology at ASU.She is currently completing her predoctoral intern-ship at the University of Maryland Counseling Center. Christina’sresearch interests include social justice issues and feminist and existen-tial approaches to therapy. She recently published a chapter exploring fac-tors influencing initiation and maintenance of drug use by Mexican Amer-ican and European American women in a textbook on social influence inmultiple cultures.
Summary
Two-hundred and thirty-eight quotations from 195 eminent peopleregarding their beliefs about the meaning of life were content ana-lyzed. The main themes (in order of their frequency) are as follows:“Life is to be enjoyed,” “We are here to love and help others,” “It is amystery,” “There is no cosmic meaning,” “We are here to serve or wor-ship God,” “Life is a struggle,” “We must make a contribution to soci-ety,” “Our mission in life is to seek wisdom/truth, and to become self-actualized,” “We must create meaning for ourselves,” and “Life is
absurd or a joke.” Discussion focuses on the meaning of the resultsand implications for practice.
Albert Camus (1955), Viktor Frankl (1992), and Leo Tolstoy (1980)all believed that whether life had meaning was the most importantquestion in life. For them all human endeavors hinge on the issueof meaning—without meaning, nothing matters. Frankl (1978)viewed meaninglessness as the “primary neurosis of our time” (p. 2),and Carl Jung (1933) claimed that all of his clients over 35 yearsold had problems that were related to the question of meaning. Inempirical studies, the subjective experience of meaninglessnesshas been linked to depression (Beck, 1967; Seligman, 1990) andsubstance abuse and suicide (Harlow, Newcomb, & Bentler, 1986),as well as to other psychopathologies (Yalom, 1980). Althoughsatirical approaches to the meaning of life elicit laughter (see, e.g.,Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life), the personal quest for mean-ing is mostly not a laughing matter.
Yalom (1980) distinguished between two types of meaning: cos-mic and terrestrial. Cosmic meaning refers to meaning that tran-scends the individual. Cosmic meaning is usually viewed asdivinely inspired. Terrestrial meaning refers to that which isdeemed by any individual to be personally meaningful in his or herlife. Among the best known positions on the meaning of life are thefollowing:
(a) Life has no cosmic meaning and humans are doomed to insig-nificance and inevitable extinction. This pessimistic position washeld by philosophers and writers such as Clarence Darrow (1932),Bertrand Russell (1981), and Arthur Schopenhauer (1964). A pop-ular corollary to this position is that the question about the mean-ing of life itself is meaningless. Especially known for his pessimismon this topic, Schopenhauer even extolled the act of suicide andcursed romantic love because it was responsible for the continu-ance of the pitiful human race (Durant, 1927).
(b) Life has no cosmic meaning but humans can create their ownmeaning(s). Nietzsche (1957) was a pioneer of this perspective.Existentialist philosophers like Camus (1955), deBeauvoir (1948),and Sartre (1956) and the psychiatrist Erich Fromm (1947) fol-lowed his lead. They believed that humans must find the courage
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to face the meaningless abyss and take responsibility for creatingmeaning out of the chaos.
(c) Life may have cosmic meaning. Through honest and intensivesearch humans can discover truths in life. This is the perspectiveadvocated by Frankl (1992). He believed that it was part of humannature to search for the meaning of one’s existence. In contrast toexistentialists such as Camus and Sartre, Frankl believed thattranscendent meaning is not something that can be arbitrarily cre-ated by a person. It can only be discovered.
(d) Life has a cosmic meaning but humans are incapable of com-prehending the complexities of it. This is the perspective of mostreligions. Advocates include the theologians Martin Buber (1970)and Reinhold Neibuhr (1981), the psychologist William James(1956), and writer Leo Tolstoy (1980). Faith and divine revelationare the means by which humans can connect with (though not fullycomprehend) the meaning of life.
BELIEFS ABOUTTHE MEANING OF LIFE
Religions of the world vary in many of their rules for conductand rituals but their stated or implied views on the meaning of lifeare strikingly similar (see Chalmers & Irving, 1965). The gist of itis that God has given humans the gift of life. That gift comes with atest. We must worship and obey God in order to pass the test. Wecannot hope to understand all of the complexities and mystery oflife. Instead, we must have faith and trust in God.
As an atheist, Freud (1964) viewed faith and trust in God as anact of regression: We can avoid facing the depressing fact of cosmicmeaninglessness by believing in the existence of the supreme par-ent, God. From a Freudian perspective, the continuing search formeaning can serve to protect individuals from the depressing con-clusion that life has no cosmic meaning. In contrast, humanisticscholars like Buber (1970), Frankl (1992), and May (1953) believedthat the search for meaning, though often fraught with anxiety,was one of the most noble and healthy of human endeavors.
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Klinger (1977) and Baumeister (1991) also noted that many peopledo experience meaningfulness from the process of their search.
Where should one search for meaning? Humanistic psycholo-gists agree that individuals ultimately must look within them-selves, but part of that search should involve an open-minded con-sideration of what others, especially mentorlike figures, have tosay on the topic. In their search for meaning, individuals naturallyturn to highly respected spiritual leaders, authority figures, orthose who are believed to be wise or self-actualized (Ebersole &DeVogler-Ebersole, 1985). In that spirit, Will Durant (1932) askedover 100 eminent people living during the early part of the 20thcentury to state their beliefs about the meaning of life. The listincluded Bertrand Russell, Mohandas Gandhi, and George Ber-nard Shaw. More recently, the staff at Life magazine (Friend et al.,1991) solicited responses from over 650 (mostly famous) people ontheir beliefs on the meaning of life. One purpose of this line ofresearch is to provide individuals who are searching for meaning(which includes many counselors and clients) with ideas that mayinspire them to clarify their values (Kinnier, 1995).
In this study we extend the research of Durant and others bygathering quotes from a larger pool of eminent people. The emi-nent people include political and spiritual leaders, writers and phi-losophers, scientists and inventors, actors, and artists, past andpresent. All of their quotes were screened and then contentanalyzed.
METHOD
The Eminent People
The target population was eminent people. We are not suggest-ing that eminent people have all the answers; they are just one(rather unique) population who tend to be well respected by thegeneral population. Obviously, there are many individual differ-ences within the population. This study is designed to tap their col-lective wisdom.
In identifying eminent people we sought individuals who weregenerally well known and well respected by a large number of peo-ple at least inside, and preferably also outside, their professions.
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We wanted to exclude unknown people as well as well-knowncelebrities who are mostly viewed as shallow or flashy. For exam-ple, we wanted to include people like Albert Einstein, Jean PaulSartre, and Thomas Jefferson, but not people like Jerry Springer,Larry Flint, and Monica Lewinsky. For a person to be included inthe analyses all four of us had to agree that the person was wellknown and respected. In some cases, we postponed our group voteuntil more information could be acquired about the person, eitherthrough literature or from experts in their fields. Although weattempted to minimize our biases through cross-checking and rig-orous challenges to each other’s judgments, as well as through out-side consultation,we recognize that the selection process obviouslywas not bias-proof.
We wanted to insure a good representation of eminent minoritypersons and women in our sample. To that end, we purposelysearched for such representatives and also consulted with peoplewho were especially knowledgeable about those particular groupsof people. For example, we consulted directors of academic pro-grams in women’s studies and African American studies at a largesouthwestern university.
The Quotes
Quotes about the meaning of life were gathered from manysources. One source was Durant’s (1932) study. He sent letters tomore than 100 eminent people asking them an open-ended ques-tion about their beliefs regarding the meaning of life (26 responseswere published). Another source was the book titled The Meaningof Life, which was published by Life magazine (Friend et al., 1991).That book contains the verbatim responses of 173 eminent andnoneminent people to a similar question.Additionally,we searchedany relevant literature we could find, including several of the well-known books of quotations such as Bartlett’s (1968) Famous Quo-tations, Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations (1988), and onlinesources such as Gale’s Quotations (1995). We also invited col-leagues and others to add to our growing collection by providing uswith quotes they had found.
Our initial collection of quotes totaled several hundred. Eachquote was reviewed by the four coauthors in group meetings. Onlythose quotes that all four of us agreed explicitly or implicitly
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addressed the meaning-of-life question were included in theanalysis.
Extraction of the Themes
We used grounded theory and discovery-oriented procedures forextracting the themes and then identifying them within thequotes. Following suggestions of qualitative researchers such asColaizzi (1978), Glaser, (1978), LeCompte and Goetz, (1982), Milesand Huberman (1984), Polkinghorne (1994), and Strauss (1987),the following procedures were employed:
1. The four coauthors each independently read all of the quotes. Weeach summarized themes we found. Themes were revised andquotes were reviewed as needed.
2. The coauthors then met as a group and discussed the themes.Quotes were reviewed in the group forum to understand and re-solve discrepancies. The final list of 11 themes was revised and ap-proved by consensus.
3. The coauthors then independently reviewed all of the quotes andidentified which, if any, theme captured the quote. A quote could becategorized under one or more themes.
4. The coauthors again met as a group. A quote was “validated” as fit-ting under a theme if at least three of the coauthors agreed that itbelonged there and the fourth coauthor did not strongly protest(i.e., each coauthor had the power to veto any vote).
5. Finally,validated quotes within each theme category were counted.
RESULTS
A total of 238 quotations was approved at the initial screening.These published quotes were either publicly stated or written by195 eminent people (144 men and 51 women). Nine people wereidentified as having an African heritage, the rest were White. Mosthad lived during the 20th century, but 27 lived mostly during the19th century and 23 had lived prior to the 19th century. Many ofthe eminent people had more than one professional identification(e.g., spiritual leader and writer). The most frequently identifiedprofession was writer and/or philosopher (n = 126). Other profes-sional identities included artist/musician/actor (n = 23), scientist/inventor (n = 20), political or business leader (n = 17), and spiritualleader (n = 11). Two were prominent in the sports world.
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The Top 10 Themes
Although 11 themes were consensually validated, 1 theme,“Life is a test,” had only one quote that was consensually vali-dated. The remaining 10 themes had at least seven quotes thatwere consensually validated. Table 1 displays the 10 themes andthe number of eminent people who “endorsed” each theme. As canbe seen, the number of endorsements ranged from 7 for “Life isabsurd or a joke” to 33 for “To enjoy or experience life.”
Descriptions of the major themes, percentages, and (some of) thenames of the eminent people who endorsed each theme, as well asillustrative quotes, are summarized as follows.
1. To enjoy or experience life. Enjoy the “moment,” the “journey.” Thiswas the most frequently endorsed theme (by 17% of the sample).Among the endorsers were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Malcolm Forbes,Cary Grant, Janis Joplin, Thomas Jefferson, Helen Keller, SinclairLewis, and Eleanor Roosevelt. For example, Emerson encouragedhis readers “to laugh often and much” and “to appreciate beauty”(Neuhaus, 1956, p. 90). Malcolm Forbes observed that life “is a veryshort trip—while alive, live!” (Jones, 1997, p. 66). And the lyric thatJanis Joplin is best known for is “You got to get it while you can”(Partnow, 1977, p. 455). Sinclair Lewis nicely captured the idea thatlife can be enjoyed even if that is all there is. He wrote:
If I go to a play I do not enjoy it less because I do not believethat it is divinely created or divinely conducted, that it willlast forever instead of stopping at eleven, that many details ofit will remain in my memory after a few months, or that it willhave any particular moral effect on me. And I enjoy life as Ienjoy that play. (Durant, 1932, p. 38)
2. To love, help, or serve others. To show or experience compassion. Thistheme was endorsed by 13% of the sample, including PierreTeilhard de Chardin, Clarence Darrow, Albert Einstein, MohandasGandhi, Theodore Hesburg, the Dalai Lama, Albert Schweitzer,and Jean Jacques Rousseau. For example, Einstein stated that“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile” (Bartlett,1968,p.950).Viktor Frankl (1992, p. 115) believed that “love is the ultimate andhighest goal to which man [sic] can aspire. The salvation of man isthrough love and in love”. One of the greatest models for service tohumanity was Mohandas Gandhi. He said, “My consolation and myhappiness are to be found in service of all that lives, because the Di-vine essence is the sum total of all life” (Durant, 1932, p. 84).
3. Life is a mystery. This theme was also endorsed by 13% of the sam-ple, including Albert Camus, Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, Betty
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Friedan, Søren Kierkegaard, Napoleon, Stephen Hawking, andMartin Buber. For example, Camus (1955, p. 51) said, “I don’t knowwhether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I knowthat I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me toknow.” More recently, Stephen Hawking (1992, p. 175) exclaimedthat “If we find an answer to that (why we and the universe exist), itwould be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then wewould know the mind of God.”
4. Life is meaningless. This (most pessimistic) but rather populartheme was endorsed by 11% of the sample, including JosephConrad, Clarence Darrow, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, H. L.Mencken, Henry Miller, Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre, ArthurSchopenhauer, and George Bernard Shaw. For example, JosephConrad referred to life as “that mysterious arrangement of merci-less logic for a futile purpose” (Gale’s Quotations, 1995). Sartre(1956, p. 547) proclaimed that “it is meaningless that we are born; itis meaningless that we die.” George Bernard Shaw once likened lifeto a disease, “and the only difference between one man [sic] and an-other is the stage of the disease at which he lives” (Gale’s Quota-tions, 1995). The pessimism implied by this theme was poeticallycaptured by Clarence Darrow (1932,p.43) when he compared life toa ship that is “tossed by every wave and by every wind; a ship
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TABLE 1: The Top 10 Themes on the Meaning of Life, According to 195Eminent People
No. of EminentPeople Who % of
Rank Theme Endorsed the Theme Sample
1 To enjoy or experience life; enjoythe “moment,” the “journey” 33 17
2.5 To love, help, or serve others; to showor experience compassion 25 13
2.5 Life is a mystery 25 134.5 Life is meaningless 21 114.5 To serve or worship God and/or
prepare for the next (or after-) life 21 116 Life is a struggle 16 87.5 To contribute to something that is
greater than ourselves 11 67.5 To become self-actualized; to develop
or “evolve” as a person or as a species;to pursue truth(s), wisdom, or a higherlevel of being 11 6
9 To create your own meaning 10 510 Life is absurd or a joke 7 4
headed to no port and no harbor, with no rudder, no compass, no pi-lot, simply floating for a time, then lost in the waves.”
5. To serve or worship God and/or prepare for the next (or after-) life.Not surprisingly, this theme was endorsed by spiritual leaders suchas Mohandas Gandhi, Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Jr.,Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama. It was also endorsed by moresecular eminent people such as Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela,Thomas Paine,and General William Westmoreland. In total,11% ofthe sample endorsed the theme. For example, Muhammad Ali re-ferred to life as “only a preparation for the eternal home, which isfar more important than the short pleasures that seduce us here”(Gale’s Quotations, 1995). Desmond Tutu said that in life we should“give God glory by reflecting His beauty and His love. That is whywe are here and that is the purpose of our lives” (Friend et al., p. 13).Martin Luther King, Jr., said it most succinctly—“I just want to doGod’s will” (Simpson, 1988, p. 231).
6. Life is a struggle. This theme was endorsed by 8% of the sample, in-cluding Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, Edna St. VincentMillay, George Bernard Shaw, and Jonathan Swift. For example, inhis book Nicholas Nickelby, Charles Dickens referred to life as “onedamned horrid grind” (Gale’s Quotations, 1995). Jonathan Swift de-scribed life as “a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for awhileand then act our part in it” (Gale’s Quotations, 1995). And Disraelireflected that “youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a re-gret” (Bartlett, 1968, p. 612).
7. To contribute to something that is greater than ourselves. Thistheme was endorsed by 6% of the sample, including Will Durant,Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, Benjamin Franklin,Horace Mann, Margaret Mead, Richard Nixon, and MohandasGandhi. For example, the philosopher Will Durant (1932, pp. 128-129) believed that the meaning of life “lies in the chance it gives usto produce or contribute to something greater than ourselves.” Em-erson believed that our task was to “leave the world a bit better”(Neuhaus, 1956, p. 90), and Horace Mann said that “you should beashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity”(Bartlett, 1968, p. 586). George Bernard Shaw eloquently reflectedthat “the true joy in life is being used for a purpose recognized byyourself as a mighty one” (Simpson, 1988, p. 240).
8. To become self-actualized. To develop or “evolve” as a person or as aspecies. To pursue truth(s), wisdom, or a higher level of being. Thistheme was endorsed by 6% of the sample, including Marie Curie,Erich Fromm, Frederick Nietzsche, Plato, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross,Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry David Thoreau. For Fromm(1947, p. 237), “man’s [sic] main task in life is to give birth to him-self, to become what he potentially is.” Similarly, Robert LouisStevenson argued that “to become what we are capable of becomingis the only end of life” (Bartlett, 1968, p. 822). And recall whyThoreau went to the woods.He said, “I wished to live deliberately, tofront only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what
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it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I hadnot lived” (Bartlett, 1968, p. 683).
9. To create your own meaning. This theme was endorsed by 5% of thesample, including Sidney Hook, Grandma Moses, Carl Sagan,Simone deBeauvoir, John Dewey, Viktor Frankl, and Carl Jung. Forexample, Grandma Moses stated “Life is what we make it, alwayshas been, always will be” (Warner, 1992, p. 133). Carl Sagan de-scribed what he saw as the “hard truth”:
We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, sunsare made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to anobscure clod of rock.The significance of our lives and our frag-ile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We arethe custodians of life’s meaning” (Friend et al., 1991, p. 73).
10. Life is absurd or a joke. This theme was endorsed by 4% of the sam-ple, including Albert Camus, Charlie Chaplin, Bob Dylan, LouReed, and Oscar Wilde. Perhaps the person best known for seeinglife as absurd was Albert Camus, who said, “The absurd is the es-sential concept and the first truth” (Bartlett, 1968, p. 1068). CharlieChaplin once described life as “a tragedy when seen in close-up buta comedy in the long shot” (cited in Gale’s Quotations, 1995). Therock star Lou Reed (1992) likened our ability to understand life toreading “Sanskrit to a pony.” Finally, Bob Dylan (1968) observedthat “there are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke”(from “All Along the Watchtower”).
DISCUSSION
To reiterate, we are not suggesting that eminent people are nec-essarily wiser than the rest of us and thus have all the answers.They are, however, a unique population. Generally, the populationis well respected and their ideas may have a particular merit worthconsidering. Those individuals who are searching for the meaningof life may benefit from contemplating what others have concludedas they formulate their own ideas. It is also important to note thatour sample is not a random sample of eminent people. Our originalpool consisted of every eminent person we could find who had saidsomething that was published about the meaning of life.Obviously,the biggest weakness of this study was our biases—we selected thepeople and the quotes, and we formulated the themes. Althoughthe results admittedly may have been affected by our values, wedid follow procedures designed to minimize our individual biases.We also believe that as a group we have no significant systematic
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biases in regard to who should be considered eminent, whichquotes are about the meaning of life, and which themes arerepresented.
It was not our purpose to classify the eminent people accordingto their beliefs about the meaning of life. Many of the eminent peo-ple expressed many, sometimes even contradictory, beliefs aboutthe meaning of life at different times in their lives. This is certainlyunderstandable, as life events, age, maturity, and moods can influ-ence how any of us view meaning at any particular point in time. Awonderful example of this comes from Sartre. He is perhaps themost famous atheist of the 20th century. Yet just before his death,he apparently converted to theism. At that time he stated,
I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in theuniverse, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. Inshort, a being whom only a Creator could put here, and this idea of acreating hand refers to God (Schwarz, 1984, p. 122).
Thus, it was not our intention to classify where eminent peopleare on the issue of meaning. Rather we were interested in thethemes that would emerge from the group of eminent people. Theunit of study was therefore the group, not particular individuals.
One more comment on the meaning of the results—the percent-age that each theme was cited might be seen as small—the highestpercentage was just 17%. In our view, these percentages are under-estimates because of the stringent requirement for inclusion, thatis, consensus or near consensus of four judges. We decided to err onthe side of conservatism—a higher percentage of the group maywell endorse each of those themes.
From another perspective, however, it does make sense that anyheterogeneous group of individuals would present a variety ofresponses to such a general and complicated question regardingthe meaning of life. The “group answer” is complex and contradic-tory. No unitary consensual theme emerged.
Implications for Counseling
Most individuals seek meaning in their lives. The search typi-cally involves introspection and consultation—consultation withfriends, family members, and mentors, as well as with literature,poetry, and song lyrics. We view the results of this study as just
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another source of amalgamated wisdom. The themes and illustra-tive quotes can serve as a stimulus for thought and discussion.
Conclusion
We conclude this article with what we believe is the central mes-sage from our eminent (involuntary) persons. Admittedly, thissummary is our subjective portrait of the main ideas expressed.Wewrote it as if all of these unique and special people had to speak inone (group) voice. Based on our sense of the data, here is what weguess such a group voice might say about the meaning of life:
The point of it all—if there is one—remains a mystery. Perhapsthe human mind is simply incapable of grasping such a profoundidea as the meaning of life. The ever-present, lurking possibility isthat there is no cosmic meaning at all. Life certainly can be a strug-gle,unfair,and cruel.At times it all seems absurd or even a joke.Onthe other hand, there also seems to be at least some hope that lifehas meaning. It may be what we make it to be, but the meaningmay also transcend us. We at least sometimes sense that we arepart of something bigger than ourselves. We are all connected insome mysterious way. Life is a gift, an opportunity. While alive weshould live fully, savor the experience, enjoy the journey. But wealso have responsibilities. We are here to evolve into better andwiser people so that humanity may also evolve spiritually. We arehere to pursue truths and knowledge. If we find truths we muststand up for them. We are here to serve and love others. Finally, ourtask is to contribute something positive to society and to the spiri-tual evolution of humankind. We should leave the world a betterplace than we found it.Only then will we deserve to “rest in peace.”
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Reprint requests: Richard Kinnier, College of Education, Arizona State University,P. O. Box 870611, Tempe, AZ 85287; e-mail: [email protected]
