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Finding meaning

Writing of his work as a pastoral counsellor with twenty-six chronically ill
older people living in a hospital in Helsinki, Goth6ni (1990: 70) notes that:
... to ask questions and to find answers regarding the meaning of life is a
matter everyone has to do in her or his own way ... an elderly patient
usually has plenty of time to reflect upon his or her life, discover its
meaning and accept the course life has taken with all its failures and
successes, changes and limitations, as unique and good after all. This
means rebuilding one's self-identity despite the changes in the body and
cultivating one's personality despite changes in the culture and the social
networks.
Has life a purpose?
Discussing meaning, particularly the meaning of life, like the discussion of
wisdom, tends to raise smiles. Was 'the meaning of life' a Monty Python
episode? Perhaps it can in part be approached through a series of questions:
'What would it mean to you if ... : you won the pools; you couldn't play golf
anymore; your teenage son died in a car crash; you learned a new language;
you lost a cherished possession; you got an OU degree; you were told you had
terminal cancer and ten months to live?' Dittmann-Kohli (1990) investigated
the topic by getting a sample of older and younger people to complete sentence
stems like: 'When I think about myself...'; 'Perhaps I can ...'; 'I am afraid
that I ...'; 'In the next few years ...'. In reporting her findings, she asks:
How is it possible that the elderly, on the one hand, are aware of many
adverse facts of old age and anticipate threatening events but, on the other
hand, do not express negative feelings about themselves and their lives.

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