Meaning is obviously fundamental to our lives; our various daily difficulties are often due to our getting the meaning of a comment, situation and event, etc. “wrong”, or to attaching the “wrong” meaning to events/things. However, since the word “wrong” is rather problematic—as it connotes an act of “subjective” judgement—I’d like to suggest that we begin approaching the question of “meaning” in terms of coherence instead.
The root of the word ‘cohere’ comes from the Latin co- ‘together’, and haerere ‘to stick‘—and in this sense we might say that a coherent meaning is a meaning that holds “things” together well, harmoniously, in an orderly fashion. For example, it is the meaning of a story that holds the story together—the less the parts of a story complement each other, the less meaningful we find the story as a whole. Furthermore, it is obviously more helpful to hear the whole story as opposed to just a small part of it if we want to get closer to its meaning. So the basic suggestion is that meaning has to do with sticking parts—or particulars—together, in a movement that may (or may not) lead to harmonious wholes.
More generally we may consider here that what holds groups, organisations, societies, etc. together is also meaning, a shared meaning—but whether that meaning is in fact truly coherent (especially when considered from “without”, i.e. from some greater context) is often questionable. In fact, evidence seems to suggests that the shared meanings that make up the foundation of the global world of today aren’t particularly coherent. The various conflicts of our age seem to point precisely to battles between one particular meaning uniting one group of people in opposition to other meanings uniting others.
It is also possible, in fact relatively easy, to link our discussion of meaning with spirituality. After all, the ultimate concern of spirituality is wholeness—the word ‘holiness’ itself comes from the word ‘holy’, which derives from ‘whole’. (Of course, we should not think of wholeness as a “thing”, i.e. something limited. Wholeness may in fact be unlimited—although this we do not know, and it may never be possible to “know”. Nevertheless, various scientific discoveries do seem to point exactly toward the possible qualitative as well as quantitative infinity of the Cosmos—which in turn suggests that meaning itself may have unlimited depths.)
People often turn to spirituality driven by the sense that life is not complete (i.e., not whole or not meaningful) the way it is lived; when the need to connect with a deeper meaning of life appears. Indeed a spiritual search generally means a search for some “elixir” that would unite—again, make whole—the countless fragments that make up our lives. Thus we may come to glimpse an even closer connection between “wholeness” and “meaning”: implicit in the notion of an elixir is that it would be something that is not only fundamentally different than all the limited parts we already know, have experienced, etc., but that it would somehow also be capable of bringing together or containing these parts in a dynamic equilibrium within a unique and harmonious whole.
Based on the above, it may be useful to note here that it is possible to discern in all that we have discussed so far an implicit, coherent flow that introduces no conflict between our notions of “meaning” (or meaningfulness), “wholeness”, “life” and so on. This may suggest that this present way of looking itself is coherent, in that it enables us to discuss aspects of the whole of life without introducing “too sharp” divisions, without violating the notion of wholeness. In other words, proceeding the way we have been, it is possible to look at various different elements of existence as aspects of a mutually informing and coherent process, which flow in and out of each other without conflicting limitations.
But let me now bring in happiness, because—in medias res—I would like to question whether our conception of happiness (including that state of “being” we generally refer to as “happy”) may in fact be fundamentally limited, and as such, whether it may threaten (but only to a point) the notion of wholeness.
I say that happiness is limited, because we generally define happiness as “this” but not “that”—which really means that the happiness we feel, desire, or talk about has some boundary or limit, beyond which there is everything else that happiness isn’t...
The word ‘happy’ comes from ‘hap’, whose origin lies in the words ‘chance’ and ‘fortune’. ‘Chance’ itself comes from ‘cheoir’ meaning to fall or befall. This may in turn suggest that in earlier times we might have had the insight that happiness was essentially something that may or may not befall one from time to time. In fact, perhaps we ought to regard “happiness” as something akin to a sunny day, and furthermore, see that our pursuit of happiness is indeed comparable to the basically irrational desire of wanting every single day to be sunny. There is, of course, nothing wrong with (liking) sunny days, but is it coherent to want to have them all the time? And isn’t there potentially the same amount of beauty, joy, adventure, etc., we might discover in rainy days?
But here is an example even closer to the heart of the matter. The same way as drug addicts pursue internal chemical “highs” (despite the obvious destruction all that eventually brings), one might argue that by pursuing happiness we are also pursuing specific chemical, electrical, etc., arrangements of our own internal environment—which arrangement in turn we also very much hope to “keep up”, to prolong, and so on. But by desperately wanting one particular way of “being” more than any other, the principle (or even rhythm) of wholeness is inevitably violated. So if we try to make happiness—or anything else limited for that matter—the ground of our lives, our implicit tendency and the general direction of our actions will be to try to “break up” the “whole”. Which can’t help but lead to incoherence, and ultimately even to utter meaninglessness.
This “treatment” of happiness may seem too harsh. I do not mean to suggest that we may never come to some sort of an overall state that people might think of when thinking of happiness (although the word ‘joy’ might be more appropriate here—something that indeed has to do with wholeness, something without an opposite). It’s just that happiness in whatever shape or form is obviously limited. And flippant as the point may seem: we do have the word 'unhappiness', whereas there isn’t a word ‘unjoy’.
In the chaotic world of today there is obviously value in—even a necessity of—looking at happiness and the “causes” of unhappiness. It is also sensible to develop strategies, or techniques, to deal with unhappy times, the same way as it is common sense to carry an umbrella or put on waterproofs when going out for a long walk on a rainy day. But as I have said above, I would very much like to open up for enquiry whether happiness—or for that matter any other limited goal—and its pursuit can lead to wholeness and a truly meaningful life.
As Prof. David Bohm pointed out, thinking tends to entangle itself in a web of mistakes particularly through attaching unlimited meaning to limited “things” (e.g., as possessions, beliefs, ideologies, etc.). The issue is this: if we attach the highest value in life to what is only a part of life (money, possessions, happiness, etc.), we can only give a lesser value to the whole(-ness) of life. The resultant internal dynamic will inevitably lead to incoherence throughout our existence: in the events of our days, in our relationships and in our actions.