Arthur C. Brooks

Enjoyment in life, satisfaction with your accomplishments, and the meaning of life.

So I started looking at it.

Enjoyment, same as it's always been.

Young people enjoy life probably more than you and I do.

That's right.

Satisfaction among my students at Harvard, super high.

They have tons of achievements.

They're strivers.

But meaning, when I started talking about meaning, boy, their faces really fell.

And I started looking at the data.

Yeah.

I don't know what I meant to do.

My life feels meaningless.

And it turns out the data backs it up.

The number one predictor of being depressed and anxious under 30 is saying my life feels meaningless.

Yeah, the meaning of meaning.

And that's one of the reasons it took me a long time to write this book because, you know, I mean, that sounds like the punchline to a, you know, a cartoon in the New Yorker or something.

The meaning of life is too big right now.

It turns out that meaning is really a combination of three things, three questions, three why questions in life.

The first is called coherence.