We talk about meaning a lot, or at least I do. I want to live a life of meaning. I want my life to count. I want to look back and know that I have given my life to advance the Kingdom of God, whatever that looks like. I, and most other Christ-followers, are committed to this. I hope you find yourself here, too.

But here’s the thing: our pursuit of a life of meaning is constantly derailed by our sinfulness. And I don’t just mean the wrong we do. I mean our humanity. Our limited vision. Our inclination toward self. Our perspective.

Perspective. That’s the one that gets me. When I think about why it’s a challenge to consistently embrace what it takes to live a meaningful life, it’s all about perspective. We have a perspective problem. More specifically, it is a finish-line problem.

Think about it this way: If I found out today that I had 24 hours to live, I don’t have time for the proverbial bucket list. There’s no trip to the Grand Canyon. No time to catch a concert at Red Rocks. So what would I do? The same thing you’d do. We’d surround ourselves with meaning. We’d bring loved ones into the room. We might try to mend any broken bridges. We’d tell stories. We might eat our favorite meal or drink our favorite drink. Or maybe we’d watch the sunset in our favorite place. The point is that if we knew our time was running out, we wouldn’t watch more TV. We wouldn’t scroll TikTok. We’d surround ourselves with meaning.

Of course, the reason we don’t do this every day is that we lack clarity about our perspective.

We’ve lost the thread of what it means to live in bite-size chunks. We think we have the rest of our lives. But what is a life? Our lives are made up of individual days, and our days are made up of moments. Every moment is rich with the possibility to make meaning. But we have to shift our perspective. It’s a mindset change.

Now, this is the moment where many of you reading this will roll your eyes. “Valuing every moment” or “seizing the promise of each day” has become somewhat of a cliché, reduced to a beach house kitsch Etsy sign. But can I ask something? What if it’s a cliché because we’re lazy? What if it’s a cliché because we are so far removed from truly valuing our lives that we laugh at the notion? Do we roll our eyes because deep down in our subconscious, we are ashamed? We know life is precious, and we know ourselves. And many of us know that we do not treat our lives as valuable.

We waste a lot of days, don’t we? And again, I think it’s a perspective problem. For example, we live every day with certain deficiencies in our homes. A broken sink. Damaged trim. A light fixture that hangs crooked. Or eccentricities. A bucket that holds the toilet paper because that’s all you had to put it in that one time, and you never changed it because who goes into your bathroom anyway? But then it comes time to sell your home or have your mother-in-law come over, and suddenly, the oddities you have lived with for so long MUST be fixed. Why? Because the finish line has been moved up. Our perspective has changed from long-term and open-ended to short-term and finite.

The problem with us and living a meaningful life is that we set the finish line at the end of our lives, which is honestly no finish line at all. It's too abstract, and there is no sense of urgency.

What would it look like for us to change the finish line to the end of every day? Can you imagine how different we would see our vocation? Our life’s impact? Our relationships? Our experiences? If we could manage to train ourselves to change our perspective, think about the difference it would make.

But it doesn’t start without fighting that tendency inside of us to shrug this off. We get one chance at this thing and the clock is ticking. We better get on with the work of making it count.

This article originally appeared in Volume 28 of my free newsletter, Good For You.

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Do We Really Want To Live Meaningful Lives?

Of course, the reason we don’t do this every day is that we lack clarity about our perspective.

The problem with us and living a meaningful life is that we set the finish line at the end of our lives, which is honestly no finish line at all. It's too abstract, and there is no sense of urgency.