Finding Meaning Starts With How You Show Up

For many of us, meaning isn’t about self-improvement,  it’s about connection. A sense that our lives are anchored to something larger than ourselves. Which makes this thought surprisingly common:

“I’m not getting anything out of this.”

I’ve had that thought sitting in church. I’ve shown up, listened, left, and felt essentially unchanged.

The question that shifted things for me was this:

What if the point isn’t what I take out,  but what I bring in?

Any sacred space (religious or not) stops working the moment we treat it like a performance. Once we start grading the music, the message, or the person in the pulpit, we’ve quietly assigned ourselves the role of spectator instead of participant.

During a dry season, I tried a different posture:

•   I came to give thanks rather than expecting to be fed.
•   I paid attention to the ordinary moments of the week, not just the dramatic ones.
•   Sometimes I did nothing at all,  just sat in the quiet without trying to make something happen.

If something moved me, I received it as a gift. If I left without feeling changed, I didn’t judge the experience or myself. I resisted the reflex toward disappointment.

Over time, something subtle shifted.
Not fireworks.
But depth.

And that, I’ve learned, is often how meaning works.