You do what's expected of you. You attend lectures, take exams, maybe do a board year, have a part-time job, or an internship. On paper, it all looks fine. And yet, you might feel that something isn't quite right, like the question “Why am I actually doing this?” keeps popping up. Your time at university is not just a period for gaining knowledge, it's also a phase in which you grow as a person. You encounter many new ideas, choices, and people.
Over time, your personal choices may start to feel less meaningful. Some researchers refer to a shift toward the “purpose economy”: an economy driven not only by profit but also by purpose, meaning or significance. Making a meaningful choice may seem simple: just choose bio-based over fossil, or a socially responsible company over one focused solely on profit. But such a choice requires more than a single rational decision. Meaning is always a unique, personal choice, and the people around us play a bigger role than we often realize.
Different ways of living
We are connected to the people around us. When it comes to meaning, three groups are particularly important.
The first group consists of the people we meet daily, in person or online – peers, teachers, leaders in society. These are the bubbles we live in. They present us with a certain culture, which pulls us in a certain direction: we tend to value what others value. We judge ourselves through their eyes and thus check whether we are on the right track.
The second group is smaller but influential: our parents. They always play a conscious or unconscious role in our sense of meaning. We owe our existence to them, which often creates a sense of loyalty, consciously or unconsciously. Their opinions often strongly influence our choices. Yet we also make our own choices. We need to develop a degree of freedom in that process. Sometimes this requires hard work, especially when parents have clear ideas about what is meaningful or good, while children discover that these ideas don't fit their own sense of what is right. In such cases, they must learn early to follow their own path and trust their own compass.
Finally, there are those who live a good life in some way. Think of people guided by values like justice, kindness, compassion, selflessness, gentleness, or courage. Often, these are people who dare to deviate from the cultural norm. They confront us, because they challenge our own choices, but they are also the most inspiring.
People who live in these unconventional ways often provoke a strong reaction. They appeal to our inner sense of the good, the true, and the beautiful. That inner compass can be drowned out by the culture of your bubble. As long as we feel at home in the values of our social environment, this happens almost automatically, and a differing voice is often dismissed as unfounded, unrealistic, or even malicious. Following the same path as others in your (sub)culture requires the least energy, until you notice that it no longer fits. Then everything can start to feel draining: even small tasks or conversations create frustration, and your energy leaks away. When the values of our environment no longer convince us, we become more sensitive to other voices. According to Plato, the good, the true, and the beautiful guide us toward living a good life. We are naturally receptive to them, and they help us experience our life as meaningful.
And now?
What does all this mean for you during your time at university? Meaning cannot be forced or planned. It develops over time, often slowly and with detours. That can feel unsettling, especially in an environment where it seems like everyone else already knows exactly where they're going. There are several things you can do to support this process.
- Nourish your curiosity, both toward others and new sources of inspiration.
- Remember that you will be different in a year, in five years. What you grow into now is an investment in yourself later.
- During your study you learn to move between different groups. The more diverse groups you experience, the more flexible your sources of inspiration become, and the stronger your inner compass grows.
- Be critical. Check whether other ways of living are actually an improvement.
- and finally, trust your own inner compass for what is good, true, and beautiful, and keep developing it.
By paying attention to your own choices and sources of inspiration, you gradually discover what gives your life more meaning. At Rapenburg100, you don't have to walk this path alone.
Dr. Rob van Waarde, Spiritual Counselor
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