The Meanings of Life

By Roy F Baumeister

一直以来，幸福的人生和有意义的人生总是被人们混淆，但其实这两者完全不是一回事。一味追求幸福只会让人们的幸福感降低。我们怎样才能寻找到有意义的人生，而不仅仅是幸福的呢？

Parents often say: “I just want my children to be happy.” It is unusual to hear: “I just want my children’s lives to be meaningful,”yet that’s what most of us seem to want for ourselves. We fear meaninglessness. We fret about the “nihilism” of this or that aspect of our culture.1. fret: 烦恼，焦急；nihilism:虚无主义。When we lose a sense of meaning, we get depressed. What is this thing we call meaning, and why might we need it so badly?

Let’s start with the last question. To be sure, happiness and meaningfulness frequently overlap2. overlap: 部分重叠。. Perhaps some degree of meaning is a prerequisite for happiness, a necessary but insufficient condition.3. 可能“有意义”在某种程度上是“幸福”的先决条件，一个必要不充分条件。 prerequisite: 先决条件；insufficient: 不充足的。If that were the case, people might pursue meaning for purely instrumental4. instrumental: 有帮助的。reasons, as a step on the road towards happiness. But then, is there any reason to want meaning for its own sake5. for one’s own sake: 为了自己的利益。? And if there isn’t, why would people ever choose lives that are more meaningful than happy, as they sometimes do?

The difference between meaningfulness and happiness was the focus of an investigation I worked on with my fellow social psychologists. We found five sets of major differences between happiness and meaningfulness, five areas where different versions of the good life parted company.

The first had to do with getting what you want and need. Not surprisingly,satisfaction of desires was a reliable source of happiness. But it had nothing—maybe even less than nothing—to add to a sense of meaning. People are happier to the extent6. to the extent: 到……的程度。that they find their lives easy rather than difficult. Happy people say they have enough money to buy the things they want and the things they need. Good health is a factor that contributes to happiness but not to meaningfulness. Healthy people are happier than sick people, but the lives of sick people do not lack meaning. The more often people feel good—a feeling that can arise from getting what one wants or needs—the happier they are. The less often they feel bad, the happier they are. But the frequency of good and bad feelings turns out to be irrelevant to meaning, which can flourish even in very forbidding conditions.7. 但是美好和痛苦感受的发生频率与“意义”并不相干，“意义”甚至能在十分险恶的条件下显现出来。irrelevant: 不相干的； flourish: 兴旺，活跃；forbidding: 严峻的，险恶的。

The second set of differences involved time frame8. time frame: 时间框架。. Meaning and happiness are apparently experienced quite differently in time. Happiness is about the present; meaning is about the future, or, more precisely, about linking past,present and future. The more time people spent thinking about the future or the past, the more meaningful, and less happy, their lives were. Conversely9. conversely: 相反地。, the more time people spent thinking about the here and now, the happier they were.Misery is often focused on the present, too, but people are happy more often than they are miserable. If you want to maximise10. maxmise: 把……增到最大限度。your happiness, it looks like good advice to focus on the present, especially if your needs are being satisfied.

This begins to suggest a theory for why it is we care so much about meaning.Perhaps the idea is to make happiness last. Happiness seems present-focused and fleeting, whereas meaning extends into the future and the past and looks fairly stable.11. 幸福似乎是着眼当下并且转瞬即逝的，然而“意义”却横跨过去和未来，看上去相当稳定。fleeting: 飞逝的，转瞬的。For this reason, people might think that pursuing a meaningful life helps them to stay happy in the long run12. in the long run: 长期来看。. They might even be right—though,happiness is often fairly consistent13. consistent: 始终如一的，一致的。over time. Those of us who are happy today are also likely to be happy months or even years from now, and those who are unhappy about something today commonly turn out to be unhappy about other things in the distant future. Despite these realities, people experience happiness as something that is felt here and now, and that cannot be counted on14. count on: 期待，指望。to last. By contrast, meaning is seen as lasting, and so people might think they can establish a basis for a more lasting kind of happiness by cultivating15. cultivate: 培养。meaning.

Social life was the locus16. locus: 地点，场所。of our third set of differences. As you might expect, connections to other people turned out to be important both for meaning and for happiness. Being alone in the world is linked to low levels of happiness and meaningfulness, as is feeling lonely. Nevertheless, it was the particular character of one’s social connections that determined which state they helped to bring about. Meaningfulness comes from contributing to other people, whereas happiness comes from what they contribute to you. This runs counter to some conventional wisdom: it is widely assumed that helping other people makes you happy.17. 这和某些常见的至理名言背道而驰，例如：大家普遍都认为帮助他人会让自己更幸福。conventional: 常见的，传统的；run counter to: 相反，与……背道而驰；assume: 假定，想当然地认为。Well, to the extent that it does, the effect depends entirely on the overlap between meaning and happiness. Helping others had a big positive contribution to meaningfulness independent of happiness, but there was no sign that it boosted18. boost: 促进，增加。happiness independently of meaning. If anything, the effect was in the opposite direction: once we correct for the boost it gives to meaning, helping others can actually detract from19. detract from: 减损，使逊色。one’s own happiness.

The depth of social ties can also make a difference in how social life contributes to happiness and meaning. Spending time with friends was linked to higher happiness but it was irrelevant to meaning. Having a few beers with buddies or enjoying a nice lunch conversation with friends might be a source of pleasure but, on the whole, it appears not to be very important to a meaningful life. By comparison, spending more time with loved ones was linked to higher meaning and was irrelevant to happiness.The difference, presumably20. presumably: 大概，推测起来。, is in the depth of the relationship. Time with friends is often devoted to simple pleasures, so it may foster good feelings while doing little to increase meaning.21. 和朋友在一起的时间通常被归为简单的快乐，所以它可以给人带来好心情，但是对提高“生活的意义”帮助不大。foster: 培养。If your friends are grumpy or tiresome,22. grumpy: 脾气暴躁的；tiresome: 令人讨厌的，烦人的。you can just move on. Time with loved ones is not so uniformly23. uniformly: 一致地。pleasant. Sometimes one has to pay bills, deal with illnesses or repairs, and do other unsatisfying chores24. chores: 家务事，杂事。.And of course,loved ones can be difficult too, in which case you generally have to work on the relationship and hash it out.25. hash out: 经过长时间讨论解决一个问题。It is probably no coincidence that arguing was itself associated with more meaning and less happiness.

A fourth category of differences had to do with struggles, problems, stresses and the like.In general, these went with lower happiness and higher meaningfulness. We asked how many positive and negative events people had recently experienced. Having lots of good things happen turned out to be helpful for both meaning and happiness. No surprise there. But bad things were a different story. Highly meaningful lives encounter plenty of negative events, which of course reduce happiness. Indeed, stress and negative life events were two powerful blows to happiness, despite their significant positive association with a meaningful life.26. 的确，压力和消极的人生经历是对幸福的两个重大打击，尽管它们和“有意义的人生”之间具有重要而积极的关联。blow: 打击。We begin to get a sense of what the happy but not very meaningful life would be like. Stress, problems, worrying, arguing,reflecting on challenges and struggles—all these are notably27. notably: 显著地，尤其。low or absent from the lives of purely happy people, but they seem to be part of a highly meaningful life.

Do people go out looking for stress in order to add meaning to their lives? It seems more likely that they seek meaning by pursuing projects that are difficult and uncertain. One tries to accomplish things in the world: this brings ups and downs, so the net gain to happiness might be small, but the process contributes to meaningfulness either way.28. 一个人努力在世上有所作为，这让人生变得跌宕起伏，幸福的净收益可能会很少，但是无论如何，这个过程却会实现人生的意义。ups and downs: 跌宕起伏；either way: 不管怎样。

The final category of differences had to do with the self and personal identity29. personal identity: 个人认同。. Activities that express the self are an important source of meaning but are mostly irrelevant to happiness. Of the 37 items on our list that asked people to rate whether some activity (such as working,exercising or meditating) was an expression or reflection of the self,25 yielded significant positive correlations with a meaningful life and none was negative.30. yield: 产生；correlation:相关性。Only two of the 37 items (socialising, and partying without alcohol) were positively linked to happiness, and some even had a significant negative relationship. The worst was worry: if you think of yourself as a worrier, that seems to be quite a downer31. downer: 令人沮丧的事物。.

If happiness is about getting what you want, it appears that meaningfulness is about doing things that express yourself. Even just caring about issues of personal identity and self-definition was associated with more meaning, though it was irrelevant to happiness. This might seem almost paradoxical32. paradoxical: 自相矛盾的。: happiness is selfish, in the sense that it is about getting what you want and having other people do things that benefit you, and yet the self is more tied to meaning than happiness. Expressing yourself, defining yourself, building a good reputation and other selforiented activities are more about meaning than happiness.