Substitutions for Meaning | Day 9 of 100
When We Sense a Lack of Meaning, We Use These Strategies to Cope
A Brief Recap
Today’s essay builds on two earlier ideas I want to make sure to outline and review:
Containers & The Validation Trap
We grow up inside tidy containers: school, church, sports teams, structured extracurriculars. Within them, the rules are clear and the path is laid out. You know what earns gold stars and what gets you sidelined. If you behave, follow the path, and do the right thing, you're rewarded with validation. You're told you're a "good kid" or that you're "doing it right."
But this setup has a shelf life that diminishes as we age.
As we change grades, graduate and enter the wide open plains of adulthood, the containers as we knew them disappear. There are no more report cards to measure aptitude or semesters to measure time. But we’re still wired to need external feedback. No longer do we have built-in structures to provide it, so we scramble to find a sense of peace and safety however we can. Which leads us to…
Time-Hopping
When the simple rules of the old containers stop working—when we can no longer get the external validation we've confused for meaning—we try to construct perfect circumstances in our minds. And those perfect circumstances are almost always in the past for future.
I call this Time-Hopping:
This often begins as a wave of nostalgia; in order to survive our disappointing present circumstances, we hop to the Mythology of the Past and say to ourselves, "If I could just get back to how it used to be." We remember when we felt confident, when we knew what we were doing, when the path forward was clear.
When that doesn't work, we hop to the Fantasy of the Future where we imagine we'll have sorted out our present lack of connection to meaning. "Once I get that promotion, once I meet the right person, once I figure this out, everything will click into place."
This is a nice distraction. It works for a while, but we all know we can never really inhabit the past or the future. Deep down we know we must contend with the present.
When We Stop Running From the Present
At some point, we are forced to deal with the here and now. Yet we struggle to find meaning in the present moment because we're still following the old playbook by looking outside ourselves for structures or someone to tell us we're doing okay.
We might think we've evolved beyond needing external validation, but we haven't. We've just developed more sophisticated strategies to seek it. Instead of waiting for a teacher to hand us a gold star, we create our own validation systems that feel productive, mature, and purposeful. But underneath, we're still asking the same two questions we always have: "Am I doing this right?" and "Do others approve of me?"
The strategies we use to cope with our dissatisfaction with the present are so prevalent, most of us have come to believe they're what good adults are supposed to do. Upon closer inspection, however, you'll see that we're still trying to give ourselves external targets to hit so we can feel like we're on track.
The Three B's
Our Hidden Validation Strategies
Benchmark
We all compare ourselves to others—it's how we get our bearings. You see a colleague get promoted and wonder about your own trajectory. You scroll through social media and gauge where you stand relative to old friends. This is normal human behavior; we're social creatures who naturally look around to understand our place in the world.
But when we're hungry for meaning and can't find it internally, benchmarking becomes compulsive. Every interaction becomes a measurement. We start keeping mental scorecards: who's ahead in career, relationships, lifestyle, even happiness. We tell ourselves we're just "staying informed" or "being realistic about the market," but we're actually outsourcing our self-worth to a comparison game.
At our worst, benchmarking becomes deeply personal and vindictive. We vilify people who seem to be winning, dismissing their success as luck or privilege. We exhaust our energy on envy instead of creation, becoming experts at other people's lives while neglecting our own. Long-term, this robs us of any authentic sense of direction. We become so focused on playing someone else's game that we forget we could design our own.
Binge
We can literally learn anything we want. There is so much information to be consumed—and this an be a good thing! You listen to podcasts during commutes, read articles that interest you, take courses to develop skills. But sometimes we take it too far, don’t we?
When we're confused about where our meaning is coming from, consumption becomes a substitute for action. We hoard information like it's currency, believing that if we just learn enough, we'll eventually figure out what to do. We sign up for courses we don't finish, save articles we don't read, and follow experts whose advice we don't implement. It feels productive but it’s procrastination.
At our worst, we become paralyzed by contradictory advice and overwhelmed by infinite options. We live in perpetual research mode, always one book away from being ready to act. We accumulate insights without integrating them. Long-term, this keeps us stuck in theory while life passes us by. We become experts at concepts but novices at application.
Bulldoze
Hard work is a virtue. You tackle your to-do list, volunteer for challenging projects, and pride yourself on getting things done. This feels good. There's satisfaction in checking boxes, momentum, and forward motion. Plus, a penchant for productivity often brings recognition. Our ability to execute earns respect from others. And we like this.
But when we're starving for meaning, busyness becomes our drug. We pack our calendars to avoid uncomfortable questions about purpose, telling ourselves that if we just work hard enough at enough things, meaning will emerge naturally. We become addicted to the temporary high of completion while avoiding the deeper work of reflection.
At our worst, we burn out spectacularly, sacrificing relationships and health on the altar of productivity. We confuse exhaustion with importance, wearing our busyness like a badge of honor. Long-term, this leads to a hollow existence in which we’re incredibly efficient at living a life we're too busy to actually enjoy.
These Are All External Validation in Disguise
Here's what's dangerous about the Three B's: they don't feel like we're seeking validation.
Benchmarking feels like getting our bearings.
Binging feels like self-improvement.
Bulldozing feels like productivity.
We tell ourselves we're being strategic, responsible, ambitious.
But look closer.
When we benchmark, we're asking: "How am I doing compared to them?"
When we binge, we're asking: "What do the experts say I should do?"
When we bulldoze, we're asking: "Will others see how hard I'm working?"
We're still looking outside ourselves for the answers. We're still trying to prove we're good enough, smart enough, productive enough. We've just gotten more clever about disguising our need for external approval.
What We Actually Need
These strategies work temporarily. Society even rewards them. But they're all external solutions to an internal problem. They're how we cope when we're disconnected from meaning, not how we create it.
Real meaning doesn't come from being better than others, knowing more than others, or doing more than others.
It comes from transformation, service, and connection—the ingredients that actually satisfy our deeper hunger.
We can't skip this step of awareness. We have to see the The Three B’s for what they are—sophisticated forms of validation-seeking that promise meaning but deliver emptiness.
We have to recognize that as long as we're looking outside ourselves for evidence that we're okay, we'll never tap into our internal sense of navigation that equips us to make meaning from any circumstance.
Let me know how this sits. Do you resonate with the progression of Containers & The Validation Trap → Time-Hopping → The Three B’s? The main thing I’m hoping to do is get clarity on a progression that feels true so people, regardless of where they are on their journey toward meaning can see themselves.