meaning experience essay

T he lords of life, the lords of life,— I saw them pass, In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim, Use and Surprise, Surface and Dream, Succession swift, and spectral Wrong, Temperament without a tongue, And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without name; — Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west: Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled look: — Him by the hand dear nature took; Dearest nature, strong and kind, Whispered, 'Darling, never mind! Tomorrow they will wear another face, The founder thou! these are thy race!'

W here do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which, according to the old belief, stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again. Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth, that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have health and reason, yet we have no superfluity of spirit for new creation? We have enough to live and bring the year about, but not an ounce to impart or to invest. Ah that our Genius were a little more of a genius! We are like millers on the lower levels of a stream, when the factories above them have exhausted the water. We too fancy that the upper people must have raised their dams.

If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know! We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated somewhere, like those that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might be born. It is said, all martyrdoms looked mean when they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun to record it. Men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and reference. 'Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,' says the querulous farmer, 'only holds the world together.' I quote another man's saying; unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me. 'Tis the trick of nature thus to degrade today; a good deal of buzz, and somewhere a result slipped magically in. Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands, and deluges of lethe, and the men ask, 'What's the news?' as if the old were so bad. How many individuals can we count in society? how many actions? how many opinions? So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours. The history of literature — take the net result of Tiraboschi, Warton, or Schlegel, — is a sum of very few ideas, and of very few original tales, — all the rest being variation of these. So in this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense. There are even few opinions, and these seem organic in the speakers, and do not disturb the universal necessity.

What opium is instilled into all disaster! It shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping friction, but the most slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought. Ate Dea is gentle,

"Over men's heads walking aloft, With tender feet treading so soft."

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out that bodies never come in contact? Well, souls never touch their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, — no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If tomorrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me, — neither better nor worse. So is it with this calamity: it does not touch me: some thing which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. Nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be her fools and playmates. We may have the sphere for our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philosophy. Direct strokes she never gave us power to make; all our blows glance, all our hits are accidents. Our relations to each other are oblique and casual.

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? Who cares what sensibility or discrimination a man has at some time shown, if he falls asleep in his chair? or if he laugh and giggle? or if he apologize? or is affected with egotism? or thinks of his dollar? or cannot go by food? or has gotten a child in his boyhood? Of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave, and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life? Of what use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, and the man does not care enough for results, to stimulate him to experiment, and hold him up in it? or if the web is too finely woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so that life stagnates from too much reception, without due outlet? Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them? What cheer can the religious sentiment yield, when that is suspected to be secretly dependent on the seasons of the year, and the state of the blood? I knew a witty physician who found theology in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian. Very mortifying is the reluctant experience that some unfriendly excess or imbecility neutralizes the promise of genius. We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young and dodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.

Temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions, and shuts us in a prison of glass which we cannot see. There is an optical illusion about every person we meet. In truth, they are all creatures of given temperament, which will appear in a given character, whose boundaries they will never pass: but we look at them, they seem alive, and we presume there is impulse in them. In the moment it seems impulse; in the year, in the lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform tune which the revolving barrel of the music-box must play. Men resist the conclusion in the morning, but adopt it as the evening wears on, that temper prevails over everything of time, place, and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of religion. Some modifications the moral sentiment avails to impose, but the individual texture holds its dominion, if not to bias the moral judgments, yet to fix the measure of activity and of enjoyment.

I thus express the law as it is read from the platform of ordinary life, but must not leave it without noticing the capital exception. For temperament is a power which no man willingly hears any one praise but himself. On the platform of physics, we cannot resist the contracting influences of so-called science. Temperament puts all divinity to rout. I know the mental proclivity of physicians. I hear the chuckle of the phrenologists. Theoretic kidnappers and slave-drivers, they esteem each man the victim of another, who winds him round his finger by knowing the law of his being, and by such cheap signboards as the color of his beard, or the slope of his occiput, reads the inventory of his fortunes and character. The grossest ignorance does not disgust like this impudent knowingness. The physicians say, they are not materialists; but they are: — Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin! — But the definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own evidence. What notions do they attach to love! what to religion! One would not willingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them. I saw a gracious gentleman who adapts his conversation to the form of the head of the man he talks with! I had fancied that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities; in the fact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may befall me. I carry the keys of my castle in my hand, ready to throw them at the feet of my lord, whenever and in what disguise soever he shall appear. I know he is in the neighborhood hidden among vagabonds. Shall I preclude my future, by taking a high seat, and kindly adapting my conversation to the shape of heads? When I come to that, the doctors shall buy me for a cent.—— 'But, sir, medical history; the report to the Institute; the proven facts!' -- I distrust the facts and the inferences. Temperament is the veto or limitation-power in the constitution, very justly applied to restrain an opposite excess in the constitution, but absurdly offered as a bar to original equity. When virtue is in presence, all subordinate powers sleep. On its own level, or in view of nature, temperament is final. I see not, if one be once caught in this trap of so-called sciences, any escape for the man from the links of the chain of physical necessity. Given such an embryo, such a history must follow. On this platform, one lives in a sty of sensualism, and would soon come to suicide. But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed, through which the creator passes. The intellect, seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover of absolute good, intervenes for our succor, and at one whisper of these high powers, we awake from ineffectual struggles with this nightmare. We hurl it into its own hell, and cannot again contract ourselves to so base a state.

That immobility and absence of elasticity which we find in the arts, we find with more pain in the artist. There is no power of expansion in men. Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take the single step that would bring them there. A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each has his special talent, and the mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practised. We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues. I cannot recall any form of man who is not superfluous sometimes. But is not this pitiful? Life is not worth the taking, to do tricks in.

Of course, it needs the whole society, to give the symmetry we seek. The parti-colored wheel must revolve very fast to appear white. Something is learned too by conversing with so much folly and defect. In fine, whoever loses, we are always of the gaining party. Divinity is behind our failures and follies also. The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it. Like a bird which alights nowhere, but hops perpetually from bough to bough, is the Power which abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for another moment from that one.

But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. At Education-Farm, the noblest theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite powerless and melancholy. It would not rake or pitch a ton of hay; it would not rub down a horse; and the men and maidens it left pale and hungry. A political orator wittily compared our party promises to western roads, which opened stately enough, with planted trees on either side, to tempt the traveller, but soon became narrow and narrower, and ended in a squirrel-track, and ran up a tree. So does culture with us; it ends in head-ache. Unspeakably sad and barren does life look to those, who a few months ago were dazzled with the splendor of the promise of the times. "There is now no longer any right course of action, nor any self-devotion left among the Iranis." Objections and criticism we have had our fill of. There are objections to every course of life and action, and the practical wisdom infers an indifferency, from the omnipresence of objection. The whole frame of things preaches indifferency. Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere. Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question. Nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her very sense when they say, "Children, eat your victuals, and say no more of it." To fill the hour, — that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them. Under the oldest mouldiest conventions, a man of native force prospers just as well as in the newest world, and that by skill of handling and treatment. He can take hold anywhere. Life itself is a mixture of power and form, and will not bear the least excess of either. To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them. Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are. Men live in their fancy, like drunkards whose hands are too soft and tremulous for successful labor. It is a tempest of fancies, and the only ballast I know, is a respect to the present hour. Without any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of shows and politics, I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed, that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. If these are mean and malignant, their contentment, which is the last victory of justice, is a more satisfying echo to the heart, than the voice of poets and the casual sympathy of admirable persons. I think that however a thoughtful man may suffer from the defects and absurdities of his company, he cannot without affectation deny to any set of men and women, a sensibility to extraordinary merit. The coarse and frivolous have an instinct of superiority, if they have not a sympathy, and honor it in their blind capricious way with sincere homage.

The fine young people despise life, but in me, and in such as with me are free from dyspepsia, and to whom a day is a sound and solid good, it is a great excess of politeness to look scornful and to cry for company. I am grown by sympathy a little eager and sentimental, but leave me alone, and I should relish every hour and what it brought me, the pot-luck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room. I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods. I accept the clangor and jangle of contrary tendencies. I find my account in sots and bores also. They give a reality to the circumjacent picture, which such a vanishing meteorous appearance can ill spare. In the morning I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes, and mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is the temperate zone. We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry, — a narrow belt. Moreover, in popular experience, everything good is on the highway. A collector peeps into all the picture-shops of Europe, for a landscape of Poussin, a crayon-sketch of Salvator; but the Transfiguration, the Last Judgment, the Communion of St. Jerome, and what are as transcendent as these, are on the walls of the Vatican, the Uffizii, or the Louvre, where every footman may see them; to say nothing of nature's pictures in every street, of sunsets and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of the human body never absent. A collector recently bought at public auction, in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of Shakespeare : but for nothing a school-boy can read Hamlet, and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein. I think I will never read any but the commonest books, — the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare , and Milton. Then we are impatient of so public a life and planet, and run hither and thither for nooks and secrets. The imagination delights in the wood-craft of Indians, trappers, and bee-hunters. We fancy that we are strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man, and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox and woodchuck, hawk and snipe, and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world than man, and are just such superficial tenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside: it has no inside.

The mid-world is best. Nature, as we know her, is no saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos and Grahamites, she does not distinguish by any favor. She comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law, do not come out of the Sunday School, nor weigh their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. If we will be strong with her strength, we must not harbor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other nations. We must set up the strong present tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or to come. So many things are unsettled which it is of the first importance to settle, — and, pending their settlement, we will do as we do. Whilst the debate goes forward on the equity of commerce, and will not be closed for a century or two, New and Old England may keep shop. Law of copyright and international copyright is to be discussed, and, in the interim, we will sell our books for the most we can. Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line. Right to hold land, right of property, is disputed, and the conventions convene, and before the vote is taken, dig away in your garden, and spend your earnings as a waif or godsend to all serene and beautiful purposes. Life itself is a bubble and a skepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, and as much more as they will, — but thou, God's darling! heed thy private dream: thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and skepticism: there are enough of them: stay there in thy closet, and toil, until the rest are agreed what to do about it. Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better.

Human life is made up of the two elements, power and form, and the proportion must be invariably kept, if we would have it sweet and sound. Each of these elements in excess makes a mischief as hurtful as its defect. Everything runs to excess: every good quality is noxious, if unmixed, and, to carry the danger to the edge of ruin, nature causes each man's peculiarity to superabound. Here, among the farms, we adduce the scholars as examples of this treachery. They are nature's victims of expression. You who see the artist, the orator, the poet, too near, and find their life no more excellent than that of mechanics or farmers, and themselves victims of partiality, very hollow and haggard, and pronounce them failures, — not heroes, but quacks, — conclude very reasonably, that these arts are not for man, but are disease. Yet nature will not bear you out. Irresistible nature made men such, and makes legions more of such, every day. You love the boy reading in a book, gazing at a drawing, or a cast: yet what are these millions who read and behold, but incipient writers and sculptors? Add a little more of that quality which now reads and sees, and they will seize the pen and chisel. And if one remembers how innocently he began to be an artist, he perceives that nature joined with his enemy. A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.

How easily, if fate would suffer it, we might keep forever these beautiful limits, and adjust ourselves, once for all, to the perfect calculation of the kingdom of known cause and effect. In the street and in the newspapers, life appears so plain a business, that manly resolution and adherence to the multiplication-table through all weathers, will insure success. But ah! presently comes a day, or is it only a half-hour, with its angel-whispering, — which discomfits the conclusions of nations and of years! Tomorrow again, everything looks real and angular, the habitual standards are reinstated, common sense is as rare as genius, — is the basis of genius, and experience is hands and feet to every enterprise; — and yet, he who should do his business on this understanding, would be quickly bankrupt. Power keeps quite another road than the turnpikes of choice and will, namely, the subterranean and invisible tunnels and channels of life. It is ridiculous that we are diplomatists, and doctors, and considerate people: there are no dupes like these. Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future. We would look about us, but with grand politeness he draws down before us an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another behind us of purest sky. 'You will not remember,' he seems to say, 'and you will not expect.' All good conversation, manners , and action, come from a spontaneity which forgets usages, and makes the moment great. Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and impulsive. Man lives by pulses; our organic movements are such; and the chemical and ethereal agents are undulatory and alternate; and the mind goes antagonizing on, and never prospers but by fits. We thrive by casualties. Our chief experiences have been casual. The most attractive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely, and not by the direct stroke: men of genius, but not yet accredited: one gets the cheer of their light, without paying too great a tax. Theirs is the beauty of the bird, or the morning light, and not of art. In the thought of genius there is always a surprise; and the moral sentiment is well called "the newness," for it is never other; as new to the oldest intelligence as to the young child, — "the kingdom that cometh without observation." In like manner, for practical success, there must not be too much design. A man will not be observed in doing that which he can do best. There is a certain magic about his properest action, which stupefies your powers of observation, so that though it is done before you, you wist not of it. The art of life has a pudency, and will not be exposed. Every man is an impossibility, until he is born; every thing impossible, until we see a success. The ardors of piety agree at last with the coldest skepticism, — that nothing is of us or our works, — that all is of God. Nature will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel. All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having. I would gladly be moral, and keep due metes and bounds, which I dearly love, and allow the most to the will of man, but I have set my heart on honesty in this chapter, and I can see nothing at last, in success or failure, than more or less of vital force supplied from the Eternal. The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of the elements of human life to calculation, exalted Chance into a divinity, but that is to stay too long at the spark, — which glitters truly at one point, — but the universe is warm with the latency of the same fire. The miracle of life which will not be expounded, but will remain a miracle, introduces a new element. In the growth of the embryo, Sir Everard Home, I think, noticed that the evolution was not from one central point, but co-active from three or more points. Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency. So is it with us, now skeptical, or without unity, because immersed in forms and effects all seeming to be of equal yet hostile value, and now religious, whilst in the reception of spiritual law . Bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous growth of the parts: they will one day be members , and obey one will. On that one will, on that secret cause, they nail our attention and hope. Life is hereby melted into an expectation or a religion. Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam. Do but observe the mode of our illumination. When I converse with a profound mind, or if at any time being alone I have good thoughts, I do not at once arrive at satisfactions, as when, being thirsty, I drink water, or go to the fire, being cold: no! but I am at first apprised of my vicinity to a new and excellent region of life. By persisting to read or to think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were in flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the clouds that covered it parted at intervals, and showed the approaching traveller the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal meadows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze, and shepherds pipe and dance. But every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. I do not make it; I arrive there, and behold what was there already. I make! O no! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amazement, before the first opening to me of this august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert. And what a future it opens! I feel a new heart beating with the love of the new beauty. I am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West.

"Since neither now nor yesterday began These thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can A man be found who their first entrance knew."

If I have described life as a flux of moods, I must now add, that there is that in us which changes not, and which ranks all sensations and states of mind. The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees. The sentiment from which it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not, what you have done or forborne, but, at whose command you have done or forborne it.

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost, — these are quaint names, too narrow to cover this unbounded substance. The baffled intellect must still kneel before this cause, which refuses to be named, — ineffable cause, which every fine genius has essayed to represent by some emphatic symbol, as, Thales by water, Anaximenes by air, Anaxagoras by (Nous) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the moderns by love: and the metaphor of each has become a national religion. The Chinese Mencius has not been the least successful in his generalization. "I fully understand language," he said, "and nourish well my vast-flowing vigor." — "I beg to ask what you call vast-flowing vigor?" — said his companion. "The explanation," replied Mencius, "is difficult. This vigor is supremely great, and in the highest degree unbending. Nourish it correctly, and do it no injury, and it will fill up the vacancy between heaven and earth. This vigor accords with and assists justice and reason, and leaves no hunger." — In our more correct writing, we give to this generalization the name of Being, and thereby confess that we have arrived as far as we can go. Suffice it for the joy of the universe, that we have not arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our life seems not present, so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor. Most of life seems to be mere advertisement of faculty: information is given us not to sell ourselves cheap; that we are very great. So, in particulars, our greatness is always in a tendency or direction, not in an action. It is for us to believe in the rule, not in the exception. The noble are thus known from the ignoble. So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe , that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in the history of the globe. Shall we describe this cause as that which works directly? The spirit is not helpless or needful of mediate organs. It has plentiful powers and direct effects. I am explained without explaining, I am felt without acting, and where I am not. Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles. Why should I fret myself, because a circumstance has occurred, which hinders my presence where I was expected? If I am not at the meeting, my presence where I am, should be as useful to the commonwealth of friendship and wisdom, as would be my presence in that place. I exert the same quality of power in all places. Thus journeys the mighty Ideal before us; it never was known to fall into the rear. No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a better. Onward and onward! In liberated moments, we know that a new picture of life and duty is already possible; the elements already exist in many minds around you, of a doctrine of life which shall transcend any written record we have. The new statement will comprise the skepticisms, as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For, skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations out-side of them, just as much as it must include the oldest beliefs.

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, — objects, successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. The street is full of humiliations to the proud. As the fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his livery, and make them wait on his guests at table, so the chagrins which the bad heart gives off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies and gentlemen in the street, shopmen or barkeepers in hotels, and threaten or insult whatever is threatenable and insultable in us. 'Tis the same with our idolatries. People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint. Jesus the "providential man," is a good man on whom many people are agreed that these optical laws shall take effect. By love on one part, and by forbearance to press objection on the other part, it is for a time settled, that we will look at him in the centre of the horizon, and ascribe to him the properties that will attach to any man so seen. But the longest love or aversion has a speedy term. The great and crescive self, rooted in absolute nature, supplants all relative existence, and ruins the kingdom of mortal friendship and love. Marriage (in what is called the spiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality between every subject and every object. The subject is the receiver of Godhead, and at every comparison must feel his being enhanced by that cryptic might. Though not in energy, yet by presence, this magazine of substance cannot be otherwise than felt: nor can any force of intellect attribute to the object the proper deity which sleeps or wakes forever in every subject. Never can love make consciousness and ascription equal in force. There will be the same gulf between every me and thee, as between the original and the picture. The universe is the bride of the soul. All private sympathy is partial. Two human beings are like globes, which can touch only in a point, and, whilst they remain in contact, all other points of each of the spheres are inert; their turn must also come, and the longer a particular union lasts, the more energy of appetency the parts not in union acquire.

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor doubled. Any invasion of its unity would be chaos. The soul is not twin-born, but the only begotten, and though revealing itself as child in time, child in appearance, is of a fatal and universal power, admitting no co-life. Every day, every act betrays the ill-concealed deity. We believe in ourselves, as we do not believe in others. We permit all things to ourselves, and that which we call sin in others, is experiment for us. It is an instance of our faith in ourselves, that men never speak of crime as lightly as they think: or, every man thinks a latitude safe for himself, which is nowise to be indulged to another. The act looks very differently on the inside, and on the outside; in its quality, and in its consequences. Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles: it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all relations. Especially the crimes that spring from love, seem right and fair from the actor's point of view, but, when acted, are found destructive of society. No man at last believes that he can be lost, nor that the crime in him is as black as in the felon. Because the intellect qualifies in our own case the moral judgments. For there is no crime to the intellect. That is antinomian or hypernomian, and judges law as well as fact. "It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder," said Napoleon, speaking the language of the intellect. To it, the world is a problem in mathematics or the science of quantity, and it leaves out praise and blame, and all weak emotions. All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal? Saints are sad, because they behold sin, (even when they speculate,) from the point of view of the conscience, and not of the intellect; a confusion of thought. Sin seen from the thought, is a diminution or less : seen from the conscience or will, it is pravity or bad . The intellect names it shade, absence of light, and no essence. The conscience must feel it as essence, essential evil. This it is not: it has an objective existence, but no subjective.

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are; Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, Newton, Buonaparte, are the mind's ministers. Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture. The partial action of each strong mind in one direction, is a telescope for the objects on which it is pointed. But every other part of knowledge is to be pushed to the same extravagance, ere the soul attains her due sphericity. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing com-plex dramas, with tragic and comic issues , long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate, — and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long before our masquerade will end its noise of tamborines, laughter, and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary performance? — A subject and an object, — it takes so much to make the galvanic circuit complete, but magnitude adds nothing. What imports it whether it is Kepler and the sphere; Columbus and America; a reader and his book; or puss with her tail?

It is true that all the muses and love and religion hate these developments, and will find a way to punish the chemist, who publishes in the parlor the secrets of the laboratory. And we cannot say too little of our constitutional necessity of seeing things under private aspects, or saturated with our humors. And yet is the God the native of these bleak rocks. That need makes in morals the capital virtue of self-trust. We must hold hard to this poverty, however scandalous, and by more vigorous self-recoveries, after the sallies of action, possess our axis more firmly. The life of truth is cold, and so far mournful; but it is not the slave of tears, contritions, and perturbations. It does not attempt another's work, nor adopt another's facts. It is a main lesson of wisdom to know your own from another's. I have learned that I cannot dispose of other people's facts; but I possess such a key to my own, as persuades me against all their denials, that they also have a key to theirs. A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he give so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him. They wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices. Charity would be wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms. A wise and hardy physician will say, Come out of that , as the first condition of advice.

In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power of being greatly useful. A man should not be able to look other than directly and forthright. A preoccupied attention is the only answer to the importunate frivolity of other people: an attention, and to an aim which makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine answer, and leaves no appeal, and no hard thoughts. In Flaxman's drawing of the Eumenides of Aeschylus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, whilst the Furies sleep on the threshold. The face of the god expresses a shade of regret and compassion, but calm with the conviction of the irreconcilableness of the two spheres. He is born into other politics, into the eternal and beautiful. The man at his feet asks for his interest in turmoils of the earth, into which his nature cannot enter. And the Eumenides there lying express pictorially this disparity. The god is surcharged with his divine destiny.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness, — these are threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life. I dare not assume to give their order, but I name them as I find them in my way. I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture. I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me. I can very confidently announce one or another law, which throws itself into relief and form, but I am too young yet by some ages to compile a code. I gossip for my hour concerning the eternal politics. I have seen many fair pictures not in vain. A wonderful time I have lived in. I am not the novice I was fourteen, nor yet seven years ago. Let who will ask, where is the fruit? I find a private fruit sufficient. This is a fruit, — that I should not ask for a rash effect from meditations, counsels, and the hiving of truths. I should feel it pitiful to demand a result on this town and county, an overt effect on the instant month and year. The effect is deep and secular as the cause. It works on periods in which mortal lifetime is lost. All I know is reception; I am and I have: but I do not get, and when I have fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did not. I worship with wonder the great Fortune. My reception has been so large, that I am not annoyed by receiving this or that superabundantly. I say to the Genius, if he will pardon the proverb, I n for a mill, in for a million . When I receive a new gift, I do not macerate my body to make the account square, for, if I should die, I could not make the account square. The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overran the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving.

Also, that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems to me an apostasy. In good earnest, I am willing to spare this most unnecessary deal of doing. Life wears to me a visionary face. Hardest, roughest action is visionary also. It is but a choice between soft and turbulent dreams. People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am very content with knowing, if only I could know. That is an august entertainment, and would suffice me a great while. To know a little, would be worth the expense of this world. I hear always the law of Adrastia, "that every soul which had acquired any truth, should be safe from harm until another period."

I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think . I observe that difference and shall observe it. One day, I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought. Many eager persons successively make an experiment in this way, and make themselves ridiculous. They acquire democratic manners , they foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. Worse, I observe, that, in the history of mankind, there is never a solitary example of success, — taking their own tests of success. I say this polemically, or in reply to the inquiry, why not realize your world? But far be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism, — since there never was a right endeavor, but it succeeded. Patience and patience, we shall win at the last. We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life. We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.

What does Emerson say in the essay The Experience?

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21 The Experience of Meaning

Antti Kauppinen is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. His publications include ‘Meaningfulness and Time’ ( Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 2012), ‘Meaning and Happiness’ ( Philosophical Topics , 2013), and ‘Against Seizing the Day’ ( Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics , 2021).

• Published: 20 April 2022
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Recently, psychologists have started to distinguish between three kinds of experience of meaning. Drawing on philosophical as well as empirical literature, the author of this chapter argues that the experience of one’s own life making sense involves a sense of narrative justification, so that not just any kind of intelligibility suffices; the experience of purpose includes enthusiastic future-directed motivation against the background of a global sort of hopefulness, or the resonance of what one does right now with one’s values; and finally, the experience of significance consists primarily of feelings of pride and fulfilment, which construe one’s own actions as making a positive difference to the world or as mattering to someone who matters to one. Mutually exclusive philosophical views of what makes lives meaningful could all be simultaneously correct about the fittingness of these different kinds of experience.

Whether our lives are meaningful or meaningless, we certainly sometimes experience them as being one or the other. Such experiences can take many different forms. Indeed, one of the questions I will address in this chapter is whether there is a unity to all the experiences that people are apt to describe in the language of meaning. And if there are different experiences of meaning, are some more important for philosophical purposes than others?

Let me start with a passage from a classic work of literature, Ivan Turgenev’s 1862 novel Fathers and Sons . The speakers are the young widow Odintsova, and the nihilist student Bazarov, who is in love with her and is goading her to reveal her secrets. Here’s how one of their discussions goes, beginning with Odintsova’s frank confession:

‘I am unhappy because… I have no desires, no passion for life. You look at me incredulously; you think that’s said by an ‘aristocrat’, who is all in lace, and sitting in a velvet armchair. I don’t conceal the fact: I love what you call comfort, and at the same time I have little desire to live. Explain that contradiction as best you can. […]’ Bazarov shook his head. ‘You are in good health, independent, rich; what more would you have? What do you want?’ ‘What do I want’, echoed Odintsova, and she sighed, ‘I am very tired, I am old, I feel as if I have had a very long life. Yes, I am old’, she added, softly drawing the ends of her lace over her bare arms. […] Behind me I have already so many memories: my life in Petersburg, wealth, then poverty, then my father’s death, marriage, then the inevitable tour in due order…. So many memories, and nothing to remember, and before me, before me—a long, long road, and no goal…. I have no wish to go on.’ (chapter 17 ) 1

Although it’s never explicitly stated, it’s quite clear in the novel that Countess Odintsova’s problem is that she finds her life meaningless at the advanced age of twenty-nine. All her life, she has done what she was supposed to do, but the things she has done do not add up to anything—there’s ‘memories, but nothing to remember’. And looking ahead, there’s no purpose to her activities, ‘no goal’. As she goes on to say, she might find satisfaction if she could interest herself strongly in something, but she just can’t. What’s more, it’s not just her own life that feels empty to her—sometimes when she comes out of her fragrant bath, she ‘fall[s] to musing on the nothingness of life, the sorrow, the labour, the malice of it…’ (chapter 16 ). In brief, she’s disoriented, bored, demotivated, and perhaps on the verge of existential anxiety. And since like most people, she is hungry for meaning, she can’t be happy, in spite of being in a comfortable position to enjoy any pleasure that money, status, and beauty can buy ( Kauppinen 2013 ). For her to experience her life as meaningful, many things would have to change. As we’ll see, it’s becoming a kind of consensus view in psychology and philosophy that for the fullest kind of experience, she would need to feel that her choices make sense over time, that her actions have a larger purpose beyond the present, and that her existence matters beyond herself, at least to someone who matters to her.

1. Three Kinds of Experience of Meaning

While philosophers have understandably focused on the question of what it is and what it takes for our lives to be meaningful, the experience of meaning has been thematized in psychology in particular. It should therefore be fruitful to begin by looking at the different accounts in psychology.

While it is common for psychologists to say that they study meaningfulness or meaning in life or personal meaning, it is more accurate to describe their work as investigating the impact of various things on people’s experience or sense of meaning, as well as correlations between the experience of meaning and other things. In recent years, psychologists working on these issues have made several attempts to clarify the object of their research. A tripartite classification of experiences of meaning has emerged in this literature. Here are some representative summaries:

We define MIL [meaning in life] as the extent to which one’s life is experienced as making sense, as being directed and motivated by valued goals, and as mattering in the world. ( George and Park 2016 , 206) Lives may be experienced as meaningful when they are felt to have significance beyond the trivial or momentary, to have purpose, or to have a coherence that transcends chaos. ( King at al. 2006 , 180) [W]e thus define meaning in life as emerging from the web of connections, interpretations, aspirations, and evaluations that make our experiences comprehensible, direct our efforts toward desired futures, and provide a sense that our lives matter and are worthwhile. ( Martela and Steger 2016 , 538)

These definitions are naturally read as saying that there are three components to a unified experience of meaning. But it is also clear that these experiences can and do come apart, as Frank Martela and Michael Steger (2016) , in particular, rightly emphasize—you can find your life intelligible without finding it significant, for example. Perhaps we can say that no one fully experiences their life as being meaningful without all of them. (I’ll come back to this later.)

The three main varieties that psychologists have focused on, then, are experiences of (1) making sense , or intelligibility , or coherence , which have to do with finding patterns and connections; (2) purpose , or orientation towards goals felt to be valuable; and (3) significance or mattering , or making a positive difference in the world. Psychologists recognize that these experiences have cognitive, motivational, and affective elements ( Reker and Wong 2012 , 435), but don’t agree on what these elements are. I will next make my own proposal concerning what is involved in these different kinds of experience, drawing on philosophy as well as psychology.

2. Making Sense, Purpose and Resonance, and Significance

Making sense.

Many kinds of things can make sense or can fail to do so. Sentences, utterances, and gestures can be meaningful, and random strings of numbers meaningless. There might be distinctive experiences associated with meaning in this sense—think of the moment when it dawns on you what the perfectly grammatical English sentence ‘Fish fish fish fish fish’ says, or the bafflement that precedes the correct parsing—but they are not experiences of meaning in life, contrary to what psychologists sometimes suggest. 2 No one can seriously claim that you can’t find your life meaningless as long as you get what people mean by what they say.

We might also say that an inane plot twist in a movie, or a young, healthy person suddenly dying of a stroke, doesn’t make sense, or that going to a fancy restaurant to celebrate a victory does. In such cases, there is an expected pattern or a cultural script into which the events and actions either fit or don’t. When things fit into an expected pattern, we can give a kind of an explanation for why things are as they are: she went into the restaurant to celebrate, because when people succeed in something important, they typically want to enjoy the good things in life and share the joy with friends. When psychologists talk about ‘meaning-making’, they often mean finding (real or imagined) patterns in our environment. For example, Steven Heine , Travis Proulx, and Kathleen Vohs say that people are ‘meaning-makers, driven to make connections, find signals in noise, identify patterns, and establish associations in places where they may not inherently exist’ (2006, 89).

However, there are two major reasons why we should distinguish sense-making in general from experiences of meaning in life. First, while some have found that even experiencing coherent rather than discordant perceptual stimuli is linked to increased sense of meaning in life, as measured by self-report ( Heintzelman and King 2014 ), the connection is merely causal . Just as with symbols, I can find my environment intelligible without thereby finding my own life meaningful. For example, if I’m sitting on the couch watching a reality show on the TV, I certainly get the meaning of what is shown and said, and find my own activity intelligible as the sort of thing people in my culture are expected to engage in to relax, but none of this amounts to experiencing my own life as meaningful. To be sure, if my world doesn’t make any sense to me, it’s unlikely that my life will, but they are still two different things.

Second, it is arguably possible for me to find even my own life intelligible in the sense of fitting with expectations or forming recognizable patterns without yet experiencing it as meaningful in any way. Maybe it seems to me that the various things that make it up are related to each other, as might be expected in the light of my aims and cultural context. The things I do fit together nicely—they’re mutually supportive and coherent, and my life isn’t fragmented or incoherent ( George and Park 2016 ). Perhaps, as Joshua Seachris (2009) and Helena de Bres (2018) have argued, I have come to see my life in this way by way of forming the right kind of self-narrative, by ‘selecting, distilling, ordering, and unifying’ my life’s events in a story I tell myself and others, drawing on local conventions ( de Bres 2018 , 557; cf. Rosati 2013 ). Still, however, what I have done might not make sense to me. Countess Odintsova is not the only person who has done what she was supposed to do, and yet fail to see the point of it.

The problem with the thin sort of intelligibility linked to patterns and expectations is that not just any sort of explanation will do to make the right kind of sense. For example, if I don’t value learning or whatever instrumental benefits college may offer, it doesn’t make sense for me to go to college, even if it is perfectly intelligible to me and everyone else why someone like me—with my social background and high school grades, etc.—would go to college. For my life to properly make sense to me, I must regard my activities as contributing to or realizing something I consider desirable or worthwhile, as Elizabeth Anscombe (1957, 70 ff.) emphasized. Philosophers of action talk here about a rationalizing explanation , which is a source of a distinctive kind of understanding. 3 For example, it makes sense for me to go to college if I regard learning as valuable for its own sake, and it makes sense for me to study at the library, given that I’m a student. There is something that justifies and doesn’t merely causally explain what I do. When the justification takes the form of showing later actions as worthwhile in the light of earlier ones (or vice versa), it merits being called a narrative justification. This is important to emphasize, since it makes clear why even meaning-in-life-as-sense-making is not the same kind of thing as intelligibility in general. 4

What if my life doesn’t make sense to me? The opposite of meaning as intelligibility is disorientation —I don’t know what my life is about, or why I do what I do. I can’t answer the question ‘Why am I doing this/have done these things?’ to my own satisfaction. Since much of what we do makes sense in the light of cultural frameworks, major changes in cultural circumstances can bring about large-scale disorientation. Consider here Jonathan Lear’s (2008) description of what happened to the members of Crow nation, who were nomadic hunters and warriors until ‘the buffalo went away’ and they were forced to live on a reservation in the late nineteenth century. As a result, the framework of meanings in the light of which people’s aspirations and individual actions made sense collapsed. 5 Where one once had to be either a warrior or a coward, neither was now a live option—one could neither be a success nor a failure by the traditional yardsticks. It’s no wonder if the surviving Crow experienced a sense of meaninglessness. They were at a loss about how to proceed in a way that would be a sensible continuation of what they had done before—they struggled to find a narrative justification. On an individual level, the loss of a loved one may cause similar disorientation—suddenly, it no longer makes sense for me to go on as before, since the person for whose sake I did things is no longer there.

Purpose and Resonance

When psychologists talk about having purpose in life, they mean something like ‘a sense of core goals, direction in life, and enthusiasm regarding the future’ ( George and Park 2013 , 371). When we feel like our lives have purpose (or, sometimes, a purpose), we feel like there is some goal in the light of which we have reason to go on and do what serves the realization of that goal. The thought is something like ‘I am here to X, and I’m going to X’. Clearly, the aims that give rise to this kind of feeling are at a high level in the hierarchy of our aims—they are ends to which many other things we do are means, like taking care of a youth sports team or guarding a border. This is unquestionably an experience of meaning in life in the sense that philosophers, too, are interested in.

Sense of purpose is most clearly manifest in motivation, in feeling energetic and optimistic in pursuit of our goals, in feelings of flow, and in the belief that our aims give reasons for actions that serve them. As Susan Wolf puts it, we are ‘gripped, excited, interested, and engaged’ (2010, 9). Cheshire Calhoun (2018) highlights the experience of what I’ll call resonance that seems to be closely related to purpose, but nevertheless distinct. She emphasizes that we spend a lot of time doing things that we feel we have to do or do for the sake of doing something rather than nothing (2018, 15ff.). This includes activities that we find purposeful, if we’d rather skip them. In what I call the resonance sense, we experience our activities as meaningful only when we do things that we regard as worthwhile to include in our lives for their own sake . Calhoun emphasizes that they need not be life-shaping projects or commitments, but simply ways of spending time we regard ourselves as having personal reason to engage in for their own sake—what resonates with us may be watching a movie or carving a statue of a god. We might say that such activities are from our personal perspective purposeful in a self-justifying way, not in terms of a future goal.

In addition to these feelings that are linked to specific aims and values we have, there is also a much deeper kind of feeling that is also plausibly related to finding life purposeful. It is what Matthew Ratcliffe (2013) calls radical hope, a species of what he labels ‘existential feeling’. Such feelings, often vague and unnamed, are not directed towards particular objects but towards kinds of possibilities that matter to us, and thus shape how the world appears to us. So when I have the attitude of radical hope, I experience it as possible to do something that matters, independently of the particular purposes I now happen to have. Using a different language for what is likely the same phenomenon, Calhoun talks about taking a globally motivating interest in one’s future, which is manifest in having basal hope (2018, 52).

One reason to focus on existential feelings in this context is that they play an important role in relevant experiences of meaninglessness. This is manifest in at least some cases of depression. As Ratcliffe describes it, for the depressed person, the horizon of possibilities surrounding objects and activities changes: ‘What is lacking from the world of depression is not simply the anticipation and/or experience of pleasure, but a sense that there could be meaningful change, change of a kind that matters’ ( Ratcliffe 2014 , 66, emphasis in the original). It’s not just that one thinks one will fail in one’s aspirations, but that there’s no point in aspiring to anything, since one’s sense of the possibility of a better future has shrunk or vanished. This is, of course, an extreme case. One might lack a sense of purpose with respect to a particular area or aim—for example, going to school might seem pointless to someone who at the same time is excited about playing in a band. Experiences of meaninglessness would then be localized. A different sort of local experience of boredom may result when one does something only as a means to an end, even a valued end, or only because one has to kill time for one reason or another, rather than as a way of engaging positively with what resonates with one ( Calhoun 2018 , 136–144).

Significance

Experiences of significance have traditionally been central to philosophical accounts of meaning in (or ‘of’) life. As the term is used in this context, significance refers to making a positive difference beyond one’s own life. Sometimes this is put in terms of ‘connecting to something larger’, but as many have observed, what is at issue is rather a sense of contributing to some value beyond ourselves ( Nozick 1981 , 611; Wolf 2010 , Martela 2017 ). 6 And not just any value, either—when we think of our lives as significant, we think of ourselves as promoting or realizing some value that is both final (that is, not valuable merely as a means to something else) and objective (that is, not just something we happen to value, but which anyone has reason to value). It is also common to think that significance requires the value to be lasting beyond the individual moment or even life. What’s more, for me to feel that my life is significant, I must also think that it matters that I am doing it, and not someone else. This explains why creative achievements tend to generate experiences of significance—after all, insofar as what I do is creative, there’s something unique and irreplaceable to my contribution. 7

Further, I don’t get a sense of significance if I bring something good about by accident or without particular effort. For example, if I lose control of my car and end up killing a dictator, thus improving millions of lives, it’s not something that gives me comfort if I worry about the point of my existence. Thus, a sense of significance is also associated with acting purposefully and with the non-trivial exercise of our capacities. And finally, we don’t find our activities as personally meaningful if we are alienated from what we do—if our heart isn’t in it, however valuable the outcome may be. So I must feel I can be who I really am while doing something that has value. This is one reason why close personal relationships are typically so important to the experience of meaning. When I open up to another person and feel that they cherish what we do together and value me as the unique person I am, I feel that I really matter to someone whom I think really matters. This is a way to make a contribution to value beyond the self, even if it isn’t world-historical significance. Perhaps we could sum up these observations by saying that experienced significance involves thinking that our authentic self is expressed by actions that non-accidentally promote or realize something of value beyond our own good.

What is it to experience my life or activities as being significant beyond my own good? I believe that it is not in the first instance to believe that one is making a positive difference. Indeed, we might even believe that our lives are significant without experiencing that they are. That’s because the experience consists in the first instance of emotions that construe our activities as contributing to objective value. They include feelings of fulfilment and pride . Feelings of fulfilment and gratification seem to be associated especially with meaningful relationships, in which we find our worth affirmed by people who matter to us. Pride, more specifically agential pride in contrast to merely associative pride, has to do with what we regard as praiseworthy achievements. 8 The thought involved in this kind of pride is that what we’ve done or are doing meets or exceeds some demanding standards for something of objective value in virtue of exercising our capacities, so that we are praiseworthy for what we’ve done (and not merely lucky to have brought about something good) ( Kauppinen 2017 ). In having such feelings when we contemplate our lives as a whole or its defining moments, then, we affectively construe our lives as having meaning in the sense of significance.

What about experiences of lacking significance? As with purpose, it’s useful to distinguish here between local and global experiences. In the local case, you feel that what you actually do doesn’t contribute to anything of objective value or doesn’t matter to anyone who matters, either because you fail to realize your goals, or you think that your goals themselves are not worthwhile. This is consistent with thinking that there are other activities that would be significant, and that other people are doing significant things. In the latter case, the feeling involved in the experience could be agential shame or other feelings of failure—you’re the one wasting their life while others do great things. In the global case, in contrast, the experience is a kind of existential feeling involving the thought that it’s not even possible for your activities to contribute to objective value or even to the good of someone who genuinely matters, because there is no such thing or person. This is the kind of Angst or dread or generalized sense of futility that is a staple of what we sometimes call existential crises. You think of the vastness of space and time and the barely noticeable role that you play in the general scheme of things—from the perspective of the universe as a whole, what difference would it make if you had never existed? And what’s more, it’s not just you who are mortal, but also everyone you care about, so all your actions will soon enough vanish without a trace.

What these thoughts of cosmic or historical insignificance do is best understood in terms of their impact on the value of our activities: whatever we do, we can’t bring about anything whose value would be important enough in the grand scheme of things to justify our existence. A shortcut to the same conclusion is embracing value nihilism, the thought that nothing is objectively valuable, which often seems to go together with the thought that there is no divine or supernatural order in which we have a place. Conversely, if we think we can achieve something of sufficient objective or at least intersubjective value in spite of our finitude, existential Angst is reduced—indeed, according to the Terror Management Theory in psychology, it is to avoid such experiences that we construct and subscribe to cultural worldviews such as religions that promise us a place at the centre of the grand view of things ( Greenberg and Arndt 2012 ).

3. Is There a Unity to Experiences of Meaning?

Table 21.1 summarizes my proposal of what the three distinct kinds of experience of meaning in life amount to.

These experiences can and frequently do come apart. Yet it is also easy enough to see links between them. The first thing to emphasize is that all of these experiences have to do with agency . Experiences of meaning in life result from how we view the past, present, and future exercises of our own agency. In this respect, they contrast with, say, pleasure, with respect to which we may be purely passive. Second, they all involve some sort of positive evaluation of our activity. When our activities make sense to us, we regard our investment as somehow justified in the light of our personal narrative. When they’re purposeful, they serve a major end we have. And when we see them as significant, they make something beyond our lives better.

Third, I’ve tried to describe some of the central emotions and moods involved in these experiences, and it’s clear that they are distinct from each other. Still, since affective states plausibly have several components, what I’ve said leaves it possible that ‘though distinct in some ways, experiences of coherence, purpose, and significance may share the same feeling state’, as Samantha Heintzelman and Laura King put it (2014, 162). The question of whether there is such a quale is very difficult to settle, as we might expect, given that there’s no agreement even on whether there is a single sensation common to all pleasurable experiences ( Feldman 2004 ; Bramble 2013 ). In any case, experiences of meaning involve positive feelings . It is therefore unsurprising that rating well on one or another self-report scale of meaning in life is linked with high levels of life satisfaction, positive affect and physical health, and low levels of depression, among other things (for a summary, see Steger 2018 ).

One of the key questions that the plurality of experiences of meaning raises is how they are related to each other and whether some are more fundamental than others. My suggestion is that there is indeed a kind of hierarchy among them, at least insofar as we’re rational. Roughly, the picture is as follows. When we are immersed in our ordinary activities, they make sense to us by default. What we do fits together with other things we do and have done, and is justified by this connection. But occasionally we take a step back from this immersion, perhaps because something goes wrong or we can’t fit everything together. We’re then led to ask about the bigger purpose of what we do—how they relate to what we aspire to in our lives. As Will Crescioni and Roy Baumeister put it, the sort of ‘existentially meaningful life stories’ in the light of which our lives make sense ‘depict actions and decisions as following from important, stable values and contributing to the fulfillment of one or more crucial goals’ (2013, 3). There seems to be a kind of negative dependence of sense-making on purpose: if we don’t see our activities as serving some larger purpose, once the issue has been thematized for us, they don’t make sense to us.

The same sort of dialectic then repeats itself on a higher level. Normally, even if we’re led to ask about larger purposes, once we are clear on how what we do serves a purpose or resonates in itself with our values, we experience our lives as meaningful. But it is also possible that our purposes turn out to conflict, or doubts about them are raised in some other way. Then we take a further step back and reflect on those purposes themselves. Are they really worth the investment we’re making in them? Is there sufficient value in bringing them about, either for the world in general or for someone who matters to us? Do they express who we really are? Again, if we answer in the negative, the feelings echo down the chain: if I experience what I do as having insufficient significance, I’m demotivated or depressed, and consequently it ceases to make sense to me.

According to this picture, then, there is a sense in which experiences of significance are the most fundamental kind of experience of meaning. This is good news for philosophers, who have traditionally focused precisely on questions related to significance. If there is anything like the experience of meaning, it is the experience of the significance of our existence, in the light of which our particular projects appear as purposeful (and the activities we’re engaged in resonate with us), and our lives make sense. Yet in another way, we can also say that experiences of sense-making are most fundamental, since they are part and parcel of our everyday activities, while feelings of significance tend to arise only on special occasions. We could hardly experience our lives as significant if we didn’t also think that they make sense. So in different ways, both philosophers and psychologists have been getting their priorities right.

4. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have been drawing on philosophical and psychological literature to categorize and characterize three different kinds of experience of meaning in life: sense-making, purpose and resonance, and significance. They appear to be unified by focus on agency, positive evaluation, and positive affect. Their mutual dependence comes to light when we disengage from our ordinary immersion in activity, step by step.

The last question I want to broach concerns the implications of the variety of experiences of meaning for philosophical questions about meaning in life. One straightforward way in which the two might be connected is provided by the idea that for a life to be meaningful is for experiences of meaning to be fitting towards it ( Kauppinen 2012 ). If we accept this idea, and also accept that there are many kinds of experience of meaning, it follows that our lives can be said to be meaningful in different ways—that is, when they really make sense, have a purpose or resonate with us, or have significance. This offers a possible way of reconciling competing views on what makes life meaningful. When Helena de Bres (2018) and Joshua Thomas (2019) say it is intelligibility that makes life meaningful, and Cheshire Calhoun (2018) says that it’s activity we value for its own sake, and Susan Wolf (2010) and Thaddeus Metz (2013) say that it is something like subjective engagement with objective value or positive orientation of rationality towards the fundamental conditions of human existence, they could all be right about meaning, albeit in different senses. The remaining question, then, would be whether one of these ways of being meaningful is the most fundamental. This question can’t be settled here, though given that it is significance that is called into question in paradigmatic existential crises and concerns, there’s at least some reason to think that it is the philosophically most basic issue. 9

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de Bres, Helena.   2018 . ‘ Narrative and Meaning in Life’.   Journal of Moral Philosophy 15(5): 545–571.

Feldman, Fred.   2004 . Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

George, Login , and Crystal Park . 2013 . ‘ Are Meaning and Purpose Distinct? An Examination of Correlates and Predictors’.   Journal of Positive Psychology 8: 365–375.

George, Login , and Crystal Park . 2016 . ‘ Meaning in Life as Comprehension, Purpose, and Mattering: Toward Integration and New Research Questions’.   Review of General Psychology 20(3): 205–220.

Greenberg, Jeff , and Jamie Arndt . 2012 . ‘Terror Management Theory’. In Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology , ed. P. M. Van Lange , A. W. Kruglanski and E. Higgins , Vol. 1, 398–415. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Heine, Steven , Travis Proulx , and Kathleen Vohs . 2006 . ‘ The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the Coherence of Social Motivations’.   Personality and Social Psychology Review 10(2): 88–110.

Heintzelman, Samantha , and Laura King . 2014 . ‘ (The Feeling of) Meaning-as-Information’.   Personality and Social Psychology Review 18(2): 153–167.

Kauppinen, Antti.   2012 . ‘ Meaningfulness and Time’.   Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84(2): 345–377.

Kauppinen, Antti.   2013 . Meaning and Happiness.   Philosophical Topics 41(1): 161–185.

Kauppinen, Antti.   2017 . ‘Pride, Achievement, and Purpose’. In The Moral Psychology of Pride , ed. Emma Gordon and Adam Carter , 169–189. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Kauppinen, Antti. Forthcoming. ‘Creativity, Spontaneity, and Merit’. In Art and Philosophy , ed. Alex King and Christy Mac Uidhir . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

King, L. A. , J. A., Hicks , J. L., Krull , and A. K. Del Gaiso . 2006 . ‘ Positive Affect and the Experience of Meaning in Life’.   Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90: 179–196.

Lear, Jonathan   2006 . Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Martela, Frank   2017 . ‘ Meaningfulness as Contribution’.   Southern Journal of Philosophy 55(2): 232–256.

Martela, Frank , and Michael Steger . 2016 . ‘ The Three Meanings of Meaning in Life: Distinguishing Coherence, Purpose, and Significance’.   Journal of Positive Psychology 11(5): 531–545.

Metz, Thaddeus.   2013 . Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nozick, Robert.   1981 . Philosophical Explanations . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

O’Brien, Lilian.   2019 . ‘ Action Explanation and Its Presuppositions’.   Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49(1):123–146.

Ratcliffe, Matthew.   2013 . ‘ What Is It to Lose Hope?’   Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12(4): 597–614.

Ratcliffe, Matthew.   2014 . Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reker, G. T. , and P. T. P. Wong . 2012 . ‘Personal Meaning in Life and Psychosocial Adaptation in the Later Years’. In The Human Quest for Meaning: Theories, Research, and Applications , ed. P. T. P. Wong , 433–456. New York: Routledge.

Rosati, Connie.   2013 . ‘ The Story of a Life’.   Social Philosophy and Policy 30(1–2): 21–50.

Seachris, Joshua.   2009 . ‘The Meaning of Life as Narrative: A New Proposal for Interpreting Philo sophy’s “Primary” Question’. Philo 12(1): 5–23.

Steger, Michael.   2018 . ‘Meaning and Well-Being’. In Handbook of Well-Being , ed. E. Diener , S. Oishi , and L. Tay . Salt Lake City, UT: DEF. DOI: nobascholar.com

Thomas, Joshua.   2019 . ‘ Meaningfulness as Sensefulness’.   Philosophia 47(5):1555–1577.

Tracy, Jessica , and Richard Robins . 2007 . ‘ The Psychological Structure of Pride: A Tale of Two Facets’.   Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94: 516–530.

Wolf, Susan.   2010 . Meaning in Life and Why It Matters . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

The quotations are all from Constance Garnett’s translation, online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30723/30723-h/30723-h.htm .

For very broad uses of meaning-talk, see Baumeister (1991) and Thomas (2019) .

See e.g. Davidson (1963) and O’Brien (2019) .

When Martela and Steger (2016 , 536) describe intelligibility as ‘descriptive’ and ‘value-neutral’, they overlook this difference between the kind of intelligibility involved in our lives making sense to us and the intelligibility of predictable patterns.

As Lear puts it, in earlier times ‘[e]very meal was in effect the cooking-of-a-meal-so-that-those-who-ate-it-would-be-healthy-to-hunt-and-fight. At a certain point, though, hunting and fighting have become impossible. Indeed, they cease to be intelligible acts’ (2006, 40).

Or, perhaps, beyond our animal self, as Thaddeus Metz (2013 , 29) has it—maybe displaying extraordinary integrity, say, is enough to warrant a sense of significance.

On creative achievements, see Kauppinen (forthcoming) . The creativity in question need not be artistic, of course—it could be a new way of delivering breech babies, for example. Also, it may be worth emphasizing that evidently experiences of significance can also result from non-creative grunt work that someone just has to do, as long as we think it is genuinely worth doing.

Psychologists like Jessica Tracy and Richard Robins (2007) further distinguish between what they call ‘hubristic’ pride, which involves the thought that the cause of the achievement is something stable and uncontrollable within us, like some innate ability, and ‘authentic’ pride, which involves the thought that it is something specific that is under direct voluntary control, such as effort.

I’m grateful to Frank Martela for help in navigating the psychological literature and Lilian O’Brien for comments on an earlier draft.

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Essays About Life-changing Experiences: 5 Examples

Discover our guide for writing essays about life-changing experiences that combine three different elements: narrative, description, and self-reflection. 

Each of us has gone through life-changing experiences that shaped us into the individuals we are today. Because of how powerful they are, these events make for fascinating topics in writing. This subject doesn’t only let us tell our life stories, and it also pushes us to evaluate our behavior and reflect on why an incident happened.

Attract your readers by creating an excellent introduction and choosing a unique or exciting encounter. Paint a picture of the events that describe your experience vividly and finish with a strong conclusion.

5 Essay Examples

1. long essay on experience that changed my life by prasanna, 2. life-changing events: personal experience by anonymous on studycorgi.com, 3. my example of a life-changing experience by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 4. life-changing experience: death essay by writer annie, 5. a life-changing experience during the holiday season by anonymous on studymoose.com, 1. life-changing experience: defined, 2. the experience that changed my life, 3. life-changing events and how they impact lives, 4. everyday events that change a person’s life, 5. the person who change my life, 6. books or movies that changed my life, 7. a life-changing quote.

“Experiences can be good and sometimes terrible that results in a positive or negative impact on one’s life. Life is full of many unexpected challenges and unknown turning points that will come along any time. People must learn and grow from every experience that they go through in life rather than losing yourself.”

In this essay, Prasanna discusses her father’s death as her most challenging life-changing experience. She was cheerful, immature, and carefree when her father was still alive. However, when her father left, she became the decision-maker of their family because her mother was unable to.

Prasanna mentions that she lost not only a father but also a friend, motivator, and mentor. That sad and unexpected experience turned her into an introverted, mature, and responsible head of the family. Ultimately, she thanks her father for making her a better person, and because of the devastating incident, she realizes who she can trust and how she should handle the real world. You might also be interested in these essays about choice .

“In life, certain experiences present challenges that change the way people relate to themselves and their families. Certain life events mark life-changing moments that alter lives either positively or negatively. It matters how people handle their relationships at such critical moments.”

This essay contains two life events that helped the author become a better person. These events taught them to trust and appreciate people, be responsible, and value family. The first event is when their best friend passes away, leading to stress, loss of appetite, and depression. The second circumstance happened when the author postponed their studies because they were afraid to grow up and be accountable for their decisions and actions.

The writer’s family showed them love, support, and understanding through these events. These events changed their behavior, attitude, and perspective on life and guided them to strengthen family relationships.

For help picking your next essay topic, check out our 20 engaging essay topics about family .

“I thought it was awkward because he looked and acted very professional. In that moment I thought to myself, ‘this person is going to have a great impact in my life!’. I was very curious to meet him and get a chance to show him my personality.”

This essay proves that you should always believe in yourself and not be afraid to try something new. The author recalls when they had many problems and met an extraordinary person who changed their life. 

When they were in sixth grade, the writer had life issues that caused them to be anxious about any future endeavor. The author then says they don’t usually open up to teachers because they fear their reactions. Then they met Mr. Salazar, a mentor who respects and values them, and the writer considers him their best friend.

“When the funeral was over and he was laid to rest, I had a feeling I can’t even describe. It was almost an empty feeling. I knew I had lost someone that could never be replaced.”

Annie never thought that she’d go through a life-changing experience until the sudden death of her father. Her thoughts and feelings are all over the place, and she has many unanswered questions. She says that although she will never wish for anyone to experience the same. However, her father’s passing improved her life in some ways.

Her mother remarried and introduced a new father figure, who was very kind to her. Living with her stepdad allowed her to explore and do things she thought she couldn’t. Annie still mourns the loss of her birth father, but she is also grateful to have a stepdad she can lean on. She gradually accepts that she can’t bring her birth father back.

“This story as a whole has really changed me and made me an even better person in life, I’m so thankful that this happened to me because now I have a greater appreciation for the little things in life.”

The essay shows how a simple interaction on a cold day in December can completely change a person’s view on life. It starts with the writer being asked a small favor of an older man with Alzheimer’s disease to help him find his car. This experience teaches the writer to be more observant and appreciative of the things they have. The author was inspired to spend more time with loved ones, especially their grandfather, who also has Alzheimer’s disease, as they learned never to take anything for granted.

7 Prompts for Essays About Life-changing Experiences

Everyone has their definition of a life-changing experience. But in general, it is an event or series of events profoundly altering a person’s thinking, feelings, and behavior. Use this prompt to explain your understanding of the topic and discuss how a simple action, decision, or encounter can change someone’s life. You might also be interested in these essays about yourself .

For this prompt, choose a specific memory that made you re-evaluate your views, values, and morals. Then, discuss the impact of this event on your life. For example, you can discuss losing a loved one, moving to another country, or starting a new school. Your conclusion must contain the main lessons you learned from the experience and how it can help the readers.

Various positive and negative life-changing experiences happen anytime and anywhere. Sometimes, you don’t notice them until they substantially disturb your everyday life. 

To begin your essay, interview people and ask about a momentous event that happened to them and how it influenced their way of living. Then, pick the most potent life-changing experience shared. Talk about what you’d do if you were in the same situation.

Some life-changing events include common things such as marriage, parenthood, divorce, job loss, and death. Research and discuss the most common experiences that transform a person’s life. Include real-life situations and any personal encounters for an intriguing essay.

It’s normal to meet other people, but connecting with someone who will significantly impact your life is a blessing. Use this prompt to discuss that particular person, such as a parent, close friend, or romantic partner. Share who they are and how you met them, and discuss what they did or said that made a big difference in your life. 

Movies like “The Truman Show” help change your viewpoint in life. They open our minds and provide ideas for dealing with our struggles. Share how you reached an epiphany by reading a book or watching a movie. Include if it’s because of a particular dialogue, character action, or scenes you can relate to.

While others use inspirational quotes for comfort and to avoid negative thinking, some find a quote that gives them the courage to make drastic changes to better their lives. For this prompt, search for well-known personalities who discovered a quote that motivated them to turn their life around.  Essay Tip: When editing for grammar, we also recommend spending time and effort to improve the readability score of your essay before publishing or submitting it.

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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Sample Essays: Significant Experience

Please select from the following sample application essays:

Essay 1: Princeton | Essay 2: Harvard | Essay 3: Princeton | Essay 4: Brown

Note: The following essays were not edited by EssayEdge Editors. They appear as they were initially reviewed by admissions officers.

Sample Essay 1

Princeton, Athlete (Football)

I have learned a great many things from participating in varsity football. It has changed my entire outlook on and attitude toward life. Before my freshman year at [high-school], I was shy, had low self-esteem and turned away from seemingly impossible challenges. Football has altered all of these qualities. On the first day of freshman practice, the team warmed up with a game of touch football. The players were split up and the game began. However, during the game, I noticed that I didn't run as hard as I could, nor did I try to evade my defender and get open. The fact of the matter is that I really did not want to be thrown the ball. I didn't want to be the one at fault if I dropped the ball and the play didn't succeed. I did not want the responsibility of helping the team because I was too afraid of making a mistake. That aspect of my character led the first years of my high school life. I refrained from asking questions in class, afraid they might be considered too stupid or dumb by my classmates. All the while, I went to practice and everyday, I went home physically and mentally exhausted.

Yet my apprehension prevailed as I continued to fear getting put in the game in case another player was injured. I was still afraid of making mistakes and getting blamed by screaming coaches and angry teammates. Sometimes these fears came true. During my sophomore season, my position at backup guard led me to play in the varsity games on many occasions. On such occasions, I often made mistakes. Most of the time the mistakes were not significant; they rarely changed the outcome of a play. Yet I received a thorough verbal lashing at practice for the mistakes I had made. These occurrences only compounded my fears of playing. However, I did not always make mistakes. Sometimes I made great plays, for which I was congratulated. Now, as I dawn on my senior year of football and am faced with two starting positions, I feel like a changed person.

Over the years, playing football has taught me what it takes to succeed. From months of tough practices, I have gained a hard work ethic. From my coaches and fellow teammates, I have learned to work well with others in a group, as it is necessary to cooperate with teammates on the playing field. But most important, I have also gained self-confidence. If I fail, it doesn't matter if they mock or ridicule me; I'll just try again and do it better. I realize that it is necessary to risk failure in order to gain success. The coaches have always said before games that nothing is impossible; I know that now. Now, I welcome the challenge. Whether I succeed or fail is irrelevant; it is only important that I have tried and tested myself.

The topic of this essay is how the applicant has matured and changed since his freshman year. He focuses on football. One of the strengths of this essay is that it is well organized. The applicant clearly put time into the structure and planning of this essay. He uses the platform of football to discuss and demonstrate his personal growth and development through the high school years. What he could have done better was spend more time describing himself after he made improvements. As it is, he only tells us about his newfound confidence and drive. This essay would have been stronger had he actually shown us, perhaps by including a story or describing an event where his confidence made a difference.

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Sample Essay 2

Harvard, International experience: Living in Switzerland

"Je deteste des Americains," said the old Swiss woman sitting across from me. Her face contorted into a grimace of disgust as she and her friend continued to complain that Americans had no culture, that they never learned another language, and that their inferior customs were spreading throughout Europe like an infectious disease. Each hair on the back of my neck sprang to attention, as I strained to hear the women's inflammatory remarks. I gripped my bag of McDonald's harder with each insulting phrase.

I had been living in Geneva, Switzerland for four years, during which time I had attended an international school consisting of over 96 different nationalities. I had already become fluent in French and had become accustomed to the new culture in which I was living--a culture which I had believed to be rich in tolerance and acceptance. Naturally, the women's remarks hurt. Was I really an "ugly American?" Did I have no appreciation of anything other than McDonald's or Coca-Cola? Had I not been touched by the new world I had been exposed to? Without question, my four years in Switzerland changed my life in countless ways. From the minute I stepped off the plane at Cointrin Airport, the vastly different sights along the clean street, the ubiquitous smells of rich delicious French cuisine, and my feelings of excitement about my new surroundings told me that I definitely was "not in Kansas anymore." My school helped greatly in modifying my attitudes, as for the first time I was with peers from countries which I had only read about. Although it was sometimes difficult trying to find links between my self and my Saudi Arabian, Hungarian, French, Nigerian, or Chilean friends, I soon came to enjoy my new stir fry environment. By the time I left, I was wondering how I ever could survive the boredom of attending a homogeneous institution. This is not to say that, prior to this, I had been closed up in a bland box of a world. I had traveled to India, my father's home, and England, my mother's home, annually: a practice my family and I continue to this day. I had been brought up without specific religious beliefs, but an awareness of my parents' spiritual backgrounds of Judaism and Hinduism. Thus my exposure to these various different nationalities in Switzerland built on my found-ations of cultural awareness, rather than laying the cornerstone for it.

My understanding of my new environment was aided tremendously by my ability to speak French, and was subsequently one of the best gifts I brought back from my four year stay in Switzerland. An entire year of school lessons could not have taught me as much of the language as I learned form speaking with my Swiss friends, shopping in the local stores, or apologizing to my neighbors for hitting my ball into their yard. My proficiency in French earned me a regular spot on a nationally broadcast Swiss radio program, in which a Russian child and I discussed tensions between major world powers. This was a rare opportunity, as, although Stephen and I were peers, the fact that Russian children attended the Soviet Embassy school meant that we were not classmates. Though, even if we had been allowed to speak casually before, I am not certain that our conversation would have reached the depth of discussion we achieved on the show.

America will never again seem the same to me. Geneva gave me enough distance to look at my country through objective eyes. Traveling throughout Europe was like a trip with Gulliver: it gave me the ability to look inside myself and discern my country's faults as well as its numerous strengths. Like the Swiss women's remarks, it hurt me to find that the United States is not the only country in the world with a rich and stimulating environment. With my new perspective, I saw that America was not what it had been. Then I thought for a moment and realized that America had not changed, but I had.

One officer called this, "A good example of a foreign culture essay that works." The only negative comments about this essay came from one officer who found the conclusion to be a bit weak. "I would like to see her elaborate a little more in the last paragraph. This is because in most of her classes, she will be required to support any opinions." Another agreed that she could have kept her final points more personal and specific.

The writing is excellent.

The vocabulary is sophisticated without seeming labored. I do not suspect that the author had a thesaurus at hand! This tells me that she/he would certainly be successful academically, at least in the courses that require strong communication and analytical abilities.

This essay is very well written. The writer demonstrates a refreshing maturity that seems to come from his/her abroad experience. The essay demonstrates a transformation of the student from just an American in a foreign land to someone who embraces the international experience and grew with it.

What I like about this essay is that it shows that the traditional categories of "extracurricular activities" need not be the only way to demonstrate that one has something of interest to bring to the college experience. I think this writer would be a fascinating person to get to know, because she would be able to contribute a fresh perspective to conversations about many of the important ideas that we wrestle with in college. She might well be someone who would be especially adept at bringing together diverse members of the student body because she would not feel intimidated by differences, but would, instead, seek them out and value them highly.

Sample Essay 3

Princeton, Childhood experience: A fishing trip

Reluctantly smearing sunblock over every exposed inch of my fifty-three pound body, I prepared mentally for the arduous task that lay ahead of me. After several miserable fishing ventures which had left my skin red and my hook bare, I felt certain that, at last, my day had arrived. I stood ready to clear the first hurdle of manhood, triumph over fish. At the age of seven, I was confident that my rugged, strapping body could conquer any obstacle. Pity the fish that would become the woeful object of the first demonstration of my male prowess.

Engaging me deeply was my naive eagerness to traverse the chasm dividing boy from man. In fact, so completely absorbed was I in my thoughts that the lengthy journey to our favorite fishing spot seemed fleeting. The sudden break in the droning of the engine snapped me to reality. Abruptly jarred back into the world, I fumbled for my fishing pole. Dangling the humble rods end over the edge of the boat, I released the bail on the reel and plunked the cheap plastic lure into the water. Once I had let out enough line and set the rod in a holder, I sat back to wait for an attack on the lure. The low hum of the motor at trolling speed only added to my anxiety, like the instrumental accompaniment to a horror film. And then it hit. A sharp tug on the line pulled me to my feet faster than an electric shock. I bounded to the pole, and when I reached it, I yanked it out of the holder with all of my might. My nervous energy was so potent that when I tugged on the rod, I nearly plunged headlong over the side of the boat and into the fishs domain. Although adrenaline streamed through my veins, after five minutes both my unvanquishable strength and my superhuman will were waning steadily. Just when I was fully prepared to surrender to the fish and, with that gesture, succumb to a life of discontentment, pain, and sorrow, the fish performed a miraculous feat. Shocked and instantly revived, I watched as the mahi-mahi leapt from the oceans surface. The mahi-mahis skin gleamed with radiant hues of blue, green, and yellow in a breathtaking spray of surf. Brilliant sunlight beamed upon the spectacle, giving life to a scene which exploded into a furious spectrum of color. The exotic fish tumbled majestically back to the sea amidst a blast of foam. With this incredible display, the fish was transformed from a pitiful victim to a brilliant specimen of life. I cared no longer for any transcendent ritual I must perform, but rather, I longed only for the possession of such a proud creature. I hungered to touch such a wonder and share the fantastic bond that a hunter must feel for his kill. I needed to have that fish at any cost.

The fight lasted for only ten minutes; nevertheless, it was a ten minutes which I will never forget. When my fish neared the boat, I felt more energized than I had when the fish first struck. At my fathers command, I netted the fish and hauled it into the bottom of the boat. I was nearly bursting with exhilaration. Released from the net, the fish dropped to the bottom of the boat with a hollow thud, and my jaw dropped with it. I stared in complete horror at the violently thrashing fish which was now at my feet. Within minutes, all of the fishs vibrance, color and life had vanished. Instead, came blood. Lots of blood. It sprayed from its mouth. It sprayed from its gills. Shortly, the boat was coated with the red life blood of the mahi-mahi. It now lay twitching helplessly while it gasped and choked for oxygen in the dry air. I felt sickened, disgusted, and utterly lost in heart-wrenching pity. As I watched the color drain from the fish, leaving it a morbid pale-yellow, I realized that I was responsible for the transformation of a creature of brilliance and life into a pitiful, dying beast.

Despite my brothers cheers and praises, I rode back to shore in bitter silence. I could not help thinking about the vast difference between the magnificent creature which I saw jump in the sea and the pathetic beast which I saw gasping for life in the bloody pit of the boat. What struck me most forcefully on that day, though, was the realization that I was no mere bystander to this desecration. I was the sole cause. Had I not dropped the hook into the water, the fish undoubtedly would still be alive. I, alone, had killed this fish.

In retrospect, I am relieved that I reacted in such a way to my passage from boyhood to manhood. Although my views about many things, hunting and fishing included, have changed considerably since that day, I still retain a powerful conscience which actively molds my personality. One cannot dispute the frightening potential of the human race to induce the permanent extinction of every life form on the planet. As the ability to change the world on a global scale is arguably limited to one breed of life, so, too, is the force which impedes instinctual and conscious action, the human conscience. My own sense of strong moral principle reaches far beyond simply averting Armageddon, however. I often find myself unable to disregard this force of moral and social responsibility in whatever I do. Part of my keen social conscience is demonstrated in the effort I have made to be a positive intellectual leader among my classmates and in the community. Realizing how lucky I am to have been born with a high aptitude for learning, I feel sorry that others who also work very hard cannot achieve like I have nor be rewarded with success as I have been. In a leadership role, I hope to constructively guide my peers to find their own success and see the fruition of their own goals. By serving as class president for three consecutive years, as founder, member, and chairman of the peer counseling society, and as a peer tutor, I have enabled others to reach their goals, while finding personal gratification at the same time. I am fortunate in that I have been given the opportunity to optimize the usefulness of my personal virtues in helping others; I can only hope to continue heeding my conscience in work as a research chemist, or whatever I may do in the future. It is my right and my obligation, for I firmly maintain that the charge of a humanitarian conscience is one which each person must eternally bear for the good of humankind and all the world.

"A good example of how a talented writer can make a standard topic appealing" was the general consensus. One officer did think, though, that the writer got "overzealous" with his language and could have avoided some of the more corpulent sentences like, "Engaging me deeply was my naive eagerness to traverse the chasm dividing boy from man," by writing with a simpler, more natural voice.

I really enjoyed this essay. It starts with a wonderful, humorous touch, but describes vividly and movingly the young boy's first experience with death and with personal responsibility.

In reading this essay, I get a strong impression of the kind of person this young man must be, someone full of good humor, but great sensitivity as well. His easy way with the language convinces me that he would be an excellent student, and a welcome addition to the class.

This was a nicely written piece. This student took time to think about this experience and was able to articulate his memories of his fishing adventure rather well. This could have been another bland essay but the writer took you on the adventure with him, from boyhood to manhood.

I like the way he took his fishing adventure and transitioned to his life today and how and what he learned from it.

What I liked most about the essay was that the writer told of an experience in his childhood and was able to take that experience and make the connection to his life and goals of today.

Sample Essay 4

Brown, Achievement: Martial arts competition

A faint twinge of excitement floated through my body that night. A hint of anticipation of the coming day could not be suppressed; yet to be overcome with anxiety would not do at all. I arduously forced those pernicious thoughts from seeping in and overcoming my body and mind. I still wonder that I slept at all that night. But I did. I slept soundly and comfortably as those nervous deliberations crept into my defenseless, unsuspecting mind, pilfering my calm composure. When I awoke refreshed, I found my mind swarming with jumbled exhilaration. The adrenaline was flowing already.

After a quick breakfast, I pulled some of my gear together and headed out. The car ride of two hours seemed only a few moments as I struggled to reinstate order in my chaotic consciousness and focus my mind on the day before me. My thoughts drifted to the indistinct shadows of my memory.

My opponent's name was John Doe. There were other competitors at the tournament, but they had never posed any threat to my title. For as long as I had competed in this tournament, I had easily taken the black belt championship in my division. John, however, was the most phenomenal martial artist I had ever had the honor of witnessing at my young age of thirteen. And he was in my division. Although he was the same rank, age, size, and weight as I, he surpassed me in almost every aspect of our training. His feet were lightning, and his hands were virtually invisible in their agile swiftness. He wielded the power of a bear while appearing no larger than I. His form and techniques were executed with near perfection. Although I had never defeated his flawlessness before, victory did not seem unattainable. For even though he was extraordinary, he was not much more talented than I. I am not saying that he was not skilled or even that he was not more skilled than I, for he most certainly was, but just not much more than I. I still had one hope, however little, of vanquishing this incredible adversary, for John had one weakness: he was lazy. He didn't enjoy practicing long hours or working hard. He didn't have to. Nevertheless, I had found my passage to triumph.

My mind raced even farther back to all my other failures. I must admit that my record was not very impressive. Never before had I completed anything. I played soccer. I quit. I was a Cub Scout. I quit. I played trumpet. I quit. Karate was all I had left. The championship meant so much because I had never persevered with anything else. In the last months, I had trained with unearthly stamina and determination. I had focused all my energies into practicing for this sole aspiration. Every day of the week I trained. Every evening, I could be found kicking, blocking, and punching at an imaginary opponent in my room. Hours of constant drilling had improved my techniques and speed. All my techniques were ingrained to the point where they were instinctive. Days and weeks passed too swiftly. . . .

I was abruptly jolted back into the present. The car was pulling into the parking lot. The tournament had too quickly arrived, and I still did not feel prepared for the trial which I was to confront. I stepped out of the car into the bright morning sun, and with my equipment bag in hand, walked into the towering building.

The day was a blur. After warming up and stretching, I sat down on the cold wooden floor, closed my eyes, and focused. I cleared my mind of every thought, every worry, and every insecurity. When I opened my eyes, every sense and nerve had become sharp and attentive, every motion finely tuned and deliberate. The preliminary rounds were quiet and painless, and the championship fight was suddenly before me. I could see that John looked as calm and as confident as ever. Adrenaline raced through my body as I stepped into the ring. We bowed to each other and to the instructor, and the match began.

I apologize, but I do not recall most of the fight. I do faintly remember that when time ran out the score was tied, and we were forced to go into Sudden Death: whoever scored the next point would win. That, however, I do recall. I was tired. The grueling two points that I had won already had not been enough. I needed one more before I could taste triumph. I was determined to win, though I had little energy remaining. John appeared unfazed, but I couldn't allow him to discourage me. I focused my entire being, my entire consciousness, on overcoming this invincible nemesis. I charged. All my strenuous training, every molecule in my body, every last drop of desire was directed, concentrated on that single purpose as I exploded through his defenses and drove a solitary fist to its mark. I was not aware that I would never fight John again, but I would not have cared. Never before had I held this prize in my hands, but through pure, salty sweat and vicious determination, the achievement that I had desired so dearly and which meant so much to me was mine at last. This was the first time that I had ever really made a notable accomplishment in anything. This one experience, this one instant, changed me forever. That day I found self-confidence and discovered that perseverance yields its own sweet fruit. That day a sense of invincibility permeated the air. Mountains were nothing. The sun wasn't so bright and brilliant anymore. For a moment, I was the best.

The admissions officers admired this essay for its passion and sincerity. In fact, most of the noted drawbacks were based on the writer being too passionate. "Kind of a tempest in a teapot, don't you think?" wrote one. Other suggestions for improvement were "purely editorial" such as the overuse of adjectives and adverbs, using a passive voice, and making contradictory statements. "For example, he says, 'I slept soundly and comfortably as those nervous deliberations crept into my defenseless, unsuspecting mind, pilfering my calm composure.' How could he sleep soundly and comfortably if the nervous deliberations were pilfering his calm composure? There are a few other examples like that that I won't go into here. I would just suggest that the author look carefully to be sure his ideas stay consistent and support one another."

What I like about this essay from the point of view of an admission officer is that I am convinced that the change in attitude described by the author is real. I do believe that he will carry with him forever the hard-won knowledge that he can attain his goals, that perseverance and hard work will eventually allow him to succeed in any endeavor. This is an important quality to bring to the college experience. Especially when considering applications to prestigious institutions, the admission committee will want to feel sure that the applicants understand the need for hard work and perseverance. Many times the strongest-looking applicants are students for whom academic success has come so easily that the challenges of college come as a shock. I always like hearing stories like this, of students who know what it means to struggle and finally succeed

Return to: Lesson One: College Essay Questions

• Sample Essays: Narrative

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AMCAS Most Meaningful Experience: What You To Need To Know for 2021

• Cracking Med School Admissions Team

Out of all your AMCAS work and activities, you can choose 3 activities as your most meaningful experiences. You have an extra 1325 characters to write about your most meaningful activities. Many applicants are uncertain how to approach these additional remarks and simply treat them as extended activity descriptions. However, making the most out of your AMCAS “most meaningful experience essays” requires deliberate choice of experiences, thoughtful reflection, and a particular style of writing. To this end, we have created this blog post in order to help you best select your most meaningful experiences and write about them effectively. We also analyze an actual most meaningful essay from a previously successful applicant!

In this blog post, we’ll help you decide and write STRONG AMCAS “most meaningful experience” descriptions:

• How to choose your most meaningful experiences 
• 5 AMCAS most meaningful activities description tips
• AMCAS Most Meaningful Essay Example
• FAQs – AMCAS meaningful experiences

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How to choose an AMCAS most meaningful experience

How many characters is the most meaningful experience on the amcas .

You can write up to 1325 characters for 3 most meaningful experiences on the AMCAS. Your most meaningful experiences should be experiences which had a significant impact on your personal growth, development, and aspirations within medicine.

For many applicants, which experiences to designate as “most meaningful” will be immediately obvious, and the question is merely how to write about them. But for others, choosing which experiences were “most meaningful” can be difficult. Look at our 2 most meaningful description examples below from our former medical school applicants! 

We recommend asking the following in selecting your most meaningful activities: 

• Which of your qualities are you most proud of and what activities have allowed you to demonstrate them? 
• Which activities were you involved with for the longest period of time? Amount of hours? 
• Did you assume leadership roles in any activities you were involved with? 
• Which activities have helped you answer “why medicine”? 
• Are there any activities with descriptions which you would want to expand on? 
• Are there any activities you were involved with that are unique or unusual? 
• Do any of your activities seem heavily related to your personal background or themes of your application?

For inspiration, use our Cracking Med School Admissions AMCAS Workbook to brainstorm important experiences and stories from all your extracurricular activities. Think back on which experiences have allowed you to develop and/or demonstrate your passions. Ultimately, the best “most meaningful” essays will be about experiences you feel truly passionate about!

FREE AMCAS Work & Activities Workbook

Use this workbook to write STELLAR AMCAS descriptions. This section is as important as your personal statement.

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5 Important Tips for your AMCAS Most Meaningful Experience Essays

Most meaningful activity amcas tip #1: tell a story.

As with most written components of your application, your most meaningful remarks should “show not tell.” This is especially relevant for your most meaningful experiences as you already had 700-characters to describe the activity and what you did in a more literal manner. As such, readers will expect more emphasis on reflection, what you learned, and why the experience was meaningful to you. The best way to do this is to share a short anecdote that highlights positive traits about you while demonstrating how the experience had an impact on you. See our AMCAS most meaningful experience example essay below! 

Key Tip: Highlight experiences and stories that you have NOT used in your personal statement.

Most Meaningful Activity AMCAS Tip #2: Differentiate yourself

Many medical school applicants will have some sort of experience in clinical volunteering, community service, research, teaching, and leadership. Therefore, in writing about your most meaningful experiences, focus on things you did that were unique or different. Not all pre-meds will have a unique background or path in life, but everyone has his or her own perspectives and stories to bring to the table. Ask yourself if anyone else’s name could be associated with your most meaningful essay without significantly changing its message. If so, re-write your essay so that it is true and specific to your experiences.

For example, applicants can write about how volunteering in the hospital taught them empathy and compassion. But only YOU can speak to a specific patient you met while volunteering and how your conversation with the patient affected you.

Most Meaningful Activity AMCAS Tip #3: Continue to highlight your passions and overall narrative

Think about how an admissions committee member might summarize your application in a 2-minute “elevator” pitch based on your personal statement and activity descriptions thus far. Structure your most meaningful remarks around this theme to maintain a consistent narrative. For example, if your application is heavily focused on translating research findings at the bench into new clinical treatments for cancer patients, your most meaningful remarks should probably focus on your research experiences and/or work with cancer patients, as well as your motivations for working toward this goal. 

Key Tip: Keep in mind that your most meaningful activities do not have to be clinically related. It is more important that the activity reveals something unique about you and is something you truly feel excited writing about. Many students choose to designate non-clinical experiences as their most meaningful activities with great success.

Most Meaningful Activity AMCAS Tip #4: Focus on impact

What did you accomplish and why was it significant? For example, if you held a leadership position in a student organization, talk about changes you made as a leader and how those changes positively benefited the group. Think about this as another form of “show not tell”: you are showing readers that you are an effective leader indirectly through your accomplishments and the impact that you had on others rather than outright telling them. If you are able to, quantify impact (X dollars raised, Y number of people affected) and be as specific as possible!

Most Meaningful Activity AMCAS Tip #5: Connect to the future

Your “most meaningful” reflections should inform readers about what type of physician you want to become and how the experience contributed to your aspirations. For example, if you write about research that you published or presented, talk about what type of research you want to do as a physician and how your experiences doing research before medical school gave you relevant skills toward that goal. This gives readers a better idea of the significance of your experience by directly making the connection for them.

AMCAS Most Meaningful Experience: Examples and Analyses

AMCAS most meaningful activity example #1:  This applicant chose to write about his neuroscience research lab experience in university. 

In the 700 character description, this applicant wrote what research question he was studying. He talked about the research skills and techniques he learned. In the 1325-character most meaningful description below, the applicant complemented his research by writing more of a reflection and how he wants to integrate research into his future career. 

AMCAS Most Meaningful Experience Example

AMCAS Most Meaningful Activity – Neuroscience Research

Science is a conversation and conclusions drawn from it may impact policy and patient care. For example, if opioid administration may sensitize fear learning, should patients receive opioids following physical trauma? The potential of translational research to inform answers to these questions inspired my interest in academic medicine. At the same time, truth is found through debate, and our findings were only one piece of a larger puzzle. I recall presenting our findings at a national conference and defending them against other neuroscientists whose studies had produced different results. As such, I have realized that conflict and disagreement are the main drivers of scientific progress.

My time in XYZ Lab also helped me develop valuable career skills. Familiarity with neuroscience has been academically enriching, but more valuable is my honed ability to communicate results to others and challenge my hypotheses by testing theory with experimentation. My familiarity with animal models will allow me to interpret and apply pre-clinical findings to inform clinical trials. In addition, creating and presenting posters to the general public, I have realized that persuading others involves more than just data—people are more convinced when you can convey results in context as part of a larger narrative.

Why is this a strong “most meaningful” essay? 

• The applicant reflects on the advancement of scientific research and its importance to medicine. As a reader, you learn that the reader has put a lot of thought about the intersection of public policy and medicine. 
• The writer connects the skills she learned and explains why it will be valuable for his career.
• The writer “sells herself” by talking about posters he presented. 

AMCAS most meaningful activity example #2: This applicant chose to write about his work in the emergency room. You can see both the 700 character AMCAS activity description and the 1325 character AMCAS most meaningful essay.

Why is this a strong “most meaningful” essay:

• The writer comes off as reflective and thoughtful about the work he is involved with. For example, he notes the role of “narrative” in convincing others about scientific findings. 
• The writer shares an anecdote at an academic conference presenting his scientific poster to show his understanding of the scientific process. Note how the anecdote itself only takes up one sentence, but gives you an idea of who the writer is and their beliefs. 
• The writer explicitly connects the experience with his future career goals in “academic medicine” and relevant skills for that career. 
• The writer highlights impact through his accomplishments, such as “creating and presenting posters” at a “national conference.”

FAQs - AMCAS Most Meaningful Activities

Q: how many characters are the most meaningful activities .

In addition to the 700-character limit allotted for every activity, activities designated as “most meaningful” receive an additional 1325-characters (essay is listed separately under “Most Meaningful Experience Remarks”). This is roughly 200 words, or one paragraph.

Q: Do you have to have 3 most meaningful experiences on the AMCAS? 

While having 3 most meaningful experiences is by no means required, we recommend students take full advantage of opportunities to strengthen their application. Think about the activities you have already written about. Is there an alternative perspective you could highlight? An anecdote you could share? Did this experience shape your future aspirations? Use the extra characters to address these questions and convince an admissions committee to admit you to their medical school class! 

Q: What if I only list 2 most meaningful AMCAS activities?

We do not recommend this. It is a lost opportunity to showcase your strengths and interests for becoming a physician. 

Q: Do my most meaningful experiences have to be clinical experiences? What about shadowing? 

Your most meaningful experiences do not have to be clinical! Many successful applicants designate non-clinical activities as their most meaningful experiences. However, we do recommend having at least one of your most meaningful experiences be related to medicine, and even relating non-clinical experiences to your career aspirations as a physician. Look at our example AMCAS activity description and AMCAS most meaningful activity essay above. 

Q: Can I include shadowing as a most meaningful AMCAS activity? 

Yes, you can include shadowing as a meaningful activity. But most of the time, our Cracking Med School Admissions team finds that shadowing is not a strong activity. While shadowing can be educational and valuable for many pre-meds, we do not recommend designating it as a most meaningful experience due to its passive nature. For your most meaningful experiences, try to focus on activities in which you actively did something and made a difference for others!

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The End of Foreign-Language Education

Thanks to AI, people may no longer feel the need to learn a second language.

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

A few days ago, I watched a video of myself talking in perfect Chinese. I’ve been studying the language on and off for only a few years, and I’m far from fluent. But there I was, pronouncing each character flawlessly in the correct tone, just as a native speaker would. Gone were my grammar mistakes and awkward pauses, replaced by a smooth and slightly alien-sounding voice. “My favorite food is sushi,” I said— wo zui xihuan de shiwu shi shousi —with no hint of excitement or joy.

I’d created the video using software from a Los Angeles–based artificial-intelligence start-up called HeyGen. It allows users to generate deepfake videos of real people “saying” almost anything based on a single picture of their face and a script, which is paired with a synthetic voice and can be translated into more than 40 languages. By merely uploading a selfie taken on my iPhone, I was able to glimpse a level of Mandarin fluency that may elude me for the rest of my life.

HeyGen’s visuals are flawed—the way it animates selfies almost reminded me of the animatronics in Disney’s It’s a Small World ride—but its language technology is good enough to make me question whether learning Mandarin is a wasted effort. Neural networks, the machine-learning systems that power generative-AI programs such as ChatGPT, have rapidly improved the quality of automatic translation over the past several years, making even older tools like Google Translate far more accurate.

At the same time, the number of students studying foreign languages in the U.S. and other countries is shrinking. Total enrollment in language courses other than English at American colleges decreased 29.3 percent from 2009 to 2021, according to the latest data from the Modern Language Association, better known as the MLA. In Australia, only 8.6 percent of high-school seniors were studying a foreign language in 2021—a historic low. In South Korea and New Zealand , universities are closing their French, German, and Italian departments. One recent study from the education company EF Education First found that English proficiency is decreasing among young people in some places.

Many factors could help explain the downward trend, including pandemic-related school disruptions, growing isolationism, and funding cuts to humanities programs. But whether the cause of the shift is political, cultural, or some mix of things, it’s clear that people are turning away from language learning just as automatic translation becomes ubiquitous across the internet.

Read: High-school English needed a makeover before ChatGPT

Within a few years, AI translation may become so commonplace and frictionless that billions of people take for granted the fact that the emails they receive, videos they watch, and albums they listen to were originally produced in a language other than their native one. Something enormous will be lost in exchange for that convenience. Studies have suggested that language shapes the way people interpret reality. Learning a different way to speak, read, and write helps people discover new ways to see the world—experts I spoke with likened it to discovering a new way to think. No machine can replace such a profoundly human experience. Yet tech companies are weaving automatic translation into more and more products. As the technology becomes normalized, we may find that we’ve allowed deep human connections to be replaced by communication that’s technically proficient but ultimately hollow.

AI language tools are now in social-media apps, messaging platforms, and streaming sites. Spotify is experimenting with using a voice-generation tool from the ChatGPT maker OpenAI to translate podcasts in the host’s own voice, while Samsung is touting that its new Galaxy S24 smartphone can translate phone calls as they’re occurring . Roblox, meanwhile, claimed last month that its AI translation tool is so fast and accurate , its English-speaking users might not realize that their conversation partner “is actually in Korea.” The technology—which works especially well for “ high-resource languages ” such as English and Chinese, and less so for languages such as Swahili and Urdu—is being used in much more high-stakes situations as well, such as translating the testimony of asylum seekers and firsthand accounts from conflict zones. Musicians are already using it to translate songs , and at least one couple credited it with helping them to fall in love.

One of the most telling use cases comes from a start-up called Jumpspeak, which makes a language-learning app similar to Duolingo and Babbel. Instead of hiring actual bilingual actors, Jumpspeak appears to have used AI-generated “people” reading AI-translated scripts in at least four ads on Instagram and Facebook. At least some of the personas shown in the ads appear to be default characters available on HeyGen’s platform. “I struggled to learn languages my whole life. Then I learned Spanish in six months, I got a job opportunity in France, and I learned French. I learned Mandarin before visiting China,” a synthetic avatar says in one of the ads, while switching between all three languages. Even a language-learning app is surrendering to the allure of AI, at least in its marketing.

Alexandru Voica, a communications professional who works for another video-generating AI service, told me he came across Jumpspeak’s ads while looking for a program to teach his children Romanian, the language spoken by their grandparents. He argued that the ads demonstrated how deepfakes and automated-translation software could be used to mislead or deceive people. “I'm worried that some in the industry are currently in a race to the bottom on AI safety,” he told me in an email. (The ads were taken down after I started reporting this story, but it’s not clear if Meta or Jumpspeak removed them; neither company returned requests for comment. HeyGen also did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its product being used in Jumpspeak’s marketing.)

The world is already seeing how all of this can go wrong. Earlier this month, a far-right conspiracy theorist shared several AI-generated clips on X of Adolf Hitler giving a 1939 speech in English instead of the original German. The videos, which were purportedly produced using software from a company called ElevenLabs, featured a re-creation of Hitler’s own voice. It was a strange experience, hearing Hitler speak in English, and some people left comments suggesting that they found him easy to empathize with: “It sounds like these people cared about their country above all else,” one X user reportedly wrote in response to the videos. ElevenLabs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ( The Atlantic uses ElevenLabs’ AI voice generator to narrate some articles.)

Read: The last frontier of machine translation

Gabriel Nicholas, a research fellow at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, told me that part of the problem with machine-translation programs is that they’re often falsely perceived as being neutral, rather than “bringing their own perspective upon how to move text from one language to another.” The truth is that there is no single right or correct way to transpose a sentence from French to Russian or any other language—it’s an art rather than a science. “Students will ask, ‘How do you say this in Spanish?’ and I’ll say, ‘You just don’t say it the same way in Spanish; the way you would approach it is different,’” Deborah Cohn, a Spanish- and Portuguese-language professor at Indiana University Bloomington who has written about the importance of language learning for bolstering U.S. national security , told me.

I recently came across a beautiful and particularly illustrative example of this fact in an article written by a translator in China named Anne. “Building a ladder between widely different languages, such as Chinese and English, is sometimes as difficult as a doctor building a bridge in a patient's heart,” she wrote. The metaphor initially struck me as slightly odd, but thankfully I wasn’t relying on ChatGPT to translate Anne’s words from their original Mandarin. I was reading a human translation by a professor named Jeffrey Ding, who helpfully noted that Anne may have been referring to a type of heart surgery that has recently become common in China. It's a small detail, but understanding that context brought me much closer to the true meaning of what Anne was trying to say.

Read: The college essay is dead

But most students will likely never achieve anything close to the fluency required to tell whether a translation rings close enough to the original or not. If professors accept that automated technology will far outpace the technical skills of the average Russian or Arabic major, their focus would ideally shift from grammar drills to developing cultural competency , or understanding the beliefs and practices of people from different backgrounds. Instead of cutting language courses in response to AI, schools should “stress more than ever the intercultural components of language learning that tremendously benefit the students taking these classes,” Jen William, the head of the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University and a member of the executive committee of the Association of Language Departments, told me.

Paula Krebs, the executive director of the MLA, referenced a beloved 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation to make a similar point. In “Darmok,” the crew aboard the starship Enterprise struggles to communicate with aliens living on a planet called El-Adrel IV. They have access to a “universal translator” that allows them to understand the basic syntax and semantics of what the Tamarians are saying, but the greater meaning of their utterances remains a mystery.

It later becomes clear that their language revolves around allegories rooted in the Tamarians’ unique history and practices. Even though Captain Picard was translating all the words they were saying, he “couldn’t understand the metaphors of their culture,” Krebs told me. More than 30 years later, something like a universal translator is now being developed on Earth. But it similarly doesn’t have the power to bridge cultural divides the way that humans can.

Beauty, Ugliness, and Black Theology A Theological Aesthetics for Black Experience

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In this paper, I argue that theological aesthetics speaks powerfully to black experience in light of this very situation. It does so, I find, through the Beauty of the Cross. While the Beauty of the Cross constitutes its own tradition developed through art, architecture, liturgics, and devotion, I use it to gesture broadly to the cruciform character of beauty in theology. The Beauty of the Cross shows how a theological account of beauty necessarily encompasses ugliness. I draw out the implications of this dynamic with regard to three doctrinal areas and related debates in black theology: theological anthropology, soteriology, and eschatology. I aim to show the utility of theological aesthetics for black experience, and center it as a vital resource for black theology.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

BREAKING: Donald Trump posts $175 million bond in civil fraud case

I saw Beyoncé get booed at the CMAs. I’ve been waiting for 'Cowboy Carter.'

To that inevitable icebreaker question, “What was your first concert?” my heart always beats with excitement at the chance to share that in 2000, when I was 8, I was lucky enough to see the group that’s now known as The Chicks . But almost every time I give that answer, I get confused looks, blank stares and sometimes laughs. Women in country music were all I was ever interested in when I was growing up, and many of the kids at school made fun of me for that. It wasn’t the cool thing to do, especially for a Black kid. But not even seeing my favorite group when I was 8 compared to the November 2016 CMA Awards when The Chicks were joined by an unannounced Black artist whose love of country music has also been questioned .

Women in country music were all I was ever interested in when I was growing up, and many of the kids at school made fun of me for that.

As soon as I heard those horns begin playing and heard Beyoncé say the word “Texas,” I knew that we at the CMAs were in for the treat of her performing her then-hit “Daddy Lessons.” Even better, she was performing it with The Chicks, the group I grew up thinking was everything. And then I heard a woman in the row ahead of me yell, “Get that Black b---- off the stage!”

In a March 19 Instagram post promoting “ Act II: Cowboy Carter ,” her album that was released today, Beyoncé wrote, “This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed… and it was very clear that I wasn’t . But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive.”

Beyoncé did not say exactly which experience had left her feeling unwelcome, but the hostile, often racist, responses she got on social media after performing at the 2016 CMAs and the CMAs taking down a post promoting her and The Chicks were big news ( a spokesperson for the award show said the post hadn’t been approved by Beyoncé).

The day after their performance with Beyoncé, The Chicks posted a link to “Daddy Lessons” on social media and wrote, “ If we all turn this up really loud, together we can drown out the hate .”

The woman in front of me yelling at Beyoncé had so much rage in her voice. Months later, I was still replaying that moment in my head. I’d ask myself: Do people feel this way about me when I enter the country music space?

Five years later, while listening to Rissi Palmer’s “Color Me Country” radio show on Apple Music, I crossed paths with Holly G, the founder of the Black Opry , a home for Black artists, fans and industry professionals working in country, Americana, blues and folk music. I accepted her invitation to the 2021 CMAs, the first time I’d been there since I saw Beyoncé disrespected. This time, because I’d found my community, the environment felt different. I felt supported.

“My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant,” Beyoncé  said in that March 19 Instagram post.

A common experience among Black country artists and fans is feeling unwelcome. Many of us were told that country music wasn’t meant for us. I think for a majority of us Black country music fans, we waited until we were a little older and less concerned with fitting in to be open about being fans of the music. That is, we became more open about or love for the music when we became more interested in finding the joy in standing out and being authentically ourselves. With the release of “Cowboy Carter,” we find solidarity with Beyoncé, who’s been open about feeling unwelcome in the country music space. Our hope is that with so many eyes on Beyoncé and Black country artists, there will be greater appreciation for Black people’s history in country music and Black country artists across the board will be in higher demand.

A common experience among Black country artists and fans is feeling unwelcome.

Beyoncé made history when her song “ Texas Hold ‘Em ” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. According to Billboard.com, “Prior to the triumph for ‘Texas Hold ‘Em,’ no Black woman, or female known to be biracial , had previously topped Hot Country Songs .” That feat is worth celebrating, but it’s not at all surprising to learn that Beyoncé has a song at the top of the charts. The more pressing question is what are country radio programmers going to do for Brittney Spencer , Camille Parker , Chapel Hart, Roberta Lea , Julie Williams , The Kentucky Gentlemen and so many other Black artists who have been knocking on country music’s doors for years? How are the people coming to the genre because of Beyoncé going to respond to those artists?

During the flood of adoration for Queen Bey’s new accomplishments, there’s a whole community of Black country fans who are hopeful that the visibility she brings to the music quickly turns to financial and substantial long-term support for lesser known Black artists in country music.

Tanner Davenport is a Nashville native who has been a fan of country music ever since he was a kid. He is a co-director of the Black Opry — a home for Black artists, fans and industry professionals working in country, Americana, blues, folk and roots music — and an artist manager in Nashville.

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• Knowledge Base
• How to write an argumentative essay | Examples & tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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Table of contents

When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

• Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
• Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
• Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
• Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
• Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
• Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

• Make a claim
• Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
• Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
• Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

• Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
• Cite data to support your claim
• Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
• Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

• Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
• Highlight the problems with this position
• Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
• Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

• Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
• Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
• Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
• Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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• The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. An age gap relationship can help.

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me.  But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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Choosing to Skip Sex and Go Straight to I.V.F.

Well aware of how difficult conception or carrying a baby to term can be, some couples who hope to exercise a bit of control over an unpredictable experience are opting to do in vitro fertilization first.

By Alyson Krueger

In February, in vitro fertilization, or I.V.F., was thrown into the spotlight when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos in the state should be considered children. The decision led to a pause on I.V.F. procedures in parts of the state , and even a pause on shipping embryos out of state, to avoid potential criminal liability. In early March, a law was passed to protect I.V.F. providers, prompting some clinics to resume the procedure, though legal challenges could still emerge.

Such rulings could have sweeping consequences for a huge number of would-be parents: In the United States, more than 2 percent of all infants born are conceived using assisted reproductive technology, of which I.V.F. is the most common. At least 12 million babies have been born globally using I.V.F. since 1978, according to the National Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies.

Couples who choose I.V.F. are still in the minority of those trying to conceive. They tend to be wealthy ( the cost of a single cycle of I.V.F . is around $23,474, according to Fertility IQ, an educational website about fertility) and are mostly in their mid- to late 30s or 40s, when the statistics for conceiving naturally are not in their favor: At age 35, there is a 15 percent chance of conceiving naturally per month, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. At 40, that drops to 5 percent.

Dr. Alan Copperman, the chief executive of RMA of New York, a fertility center, is one of many doctors seeing more couples, who are well aware of the challenges of conceiving and carrying a healthy baby to full term, skip sex and go straight to I.V.F.

The challenges that couples cite vary widely. They may not “have the time to try naturally,” said Dr. Copperman, who is also a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “They want to use technology to achieve their reproductive goals,” he said.

The choice may also be an issue of logistics; couples may not be in the same place long enough to have sex during ovulation windows. “I’ve had a lot of patients who are working in consulting or have a business, and they travel a lot for work,” said Dr. Denis Vaughan, a reproductive endocrinologist at Boston I.V.F. “They might tell me they’ve been trying for six months, but they’ve really only been together at the right time for two or three months of that time.”

Some couples are motivated by health and want to screen embryos for harmful genetic mutations that they may have or carry. Others want to use the procedure to choose the gender of their child.

Most insurance plans won’t cover I.V.F. until after a heterosexual couple has tried to conceive naturally for at least a year if the woman is under the age of 35, and for six months if she’s over. (Same-sex couples or women conceiving on their own are sometimes subject to different rules.)

That means people who choose I.V.F. are either paying for the procedure out of pocket or fudging the number of months they’ve been trying to conceive naturally. (Insurance companies or doctors can’t prove what’s happening in the bedroom.)

I.V.F., however, is hardly guaranteed to be successful: The procedure still has a risk of miscarriage, though the likelihood is lower because many embryos have been genetically tested and only the most viable are typically transferred. And success rates can vary according to maternal age. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , women under the age of 35 have an almost 50 percent chance of having a live birth after one I.V.F. cycle. For women over 40 using their own eggs, that number drops to 7 percent.

“The vast majority of people who are doing it are truly desperate and have a medical reason for doing it,” said Dr. Tarun Jain, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University. “It is a very challenging, time-consuming, physically and emotionally draining process, and a big financial burden if your insurance doesn’t cover it.”

‘Empowered and Relieved’

Sarafina El-Badry Nance, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, found out at 23 that she carried a BRCA gene mutation, an inherited variant that significantly increases a woman’s chance of developing breast and ovarian cancer. Parents have a 50 percent chance of passing it along to offspring.

“I met with a genetic counselor after getting my test results, and we talked through what it meant,” said Ms. El-Badry Nance, who is now 30. “I learned about I.VF. and genetic testing on embryos and knew that was an option for me long before I was even thinking about having a baby.”

Once her eggs were retrieved, she and her husband, Taylor Nielsen, 31, decided last summer to freeze the embryos that had tested negative for the mutation. She plans to draw from this group in the next few years when they are ready to have a child.

“In theory, once embryos are frozen, they can stay in that steady state indefinitely, without any known harm,” Dr. Jain said.

Ms. El-Badry Nance said: “I lost my grandmother to cancer. My dad was diagnosed at Stage 4. The risk profile is so high for my family.”

“I mostly just feel empowered and relieved that we will set up our child for a healthy life,” she added.

The Ability to Choose

Faith Hartley, 35, and her husband, Neil Robertson, 49, conceived their first child quickly, in July of 2019. But for their second child, who was born in December 2022, they chose I.V.F. so they could guarantee the gender. “We really wanted to have a second girl,” Ms. Hartley said.

They froze embryos in January 2022 and transferred one that March, successfully. (Most doctors recommend that a patient unfreezes whichever embryo is healthiest, but it is legal in the United States to select one based on its sex.)

Ms. Hartley, who lives in Los Angeles and works as a sleep consultant, said the procedure, which she and her husband paid for out of pocket, was the hardest thing she’s ever done, physically speaking. “The injections are brutal,” she said. She was so sore, she said, that “some days I could not get out of bed,” adding that the hormones affected her mental state.

But in the end the couple feels it was worth it: “To get the sister thing for my girls, I would have done anything,” Ms. Hartley said. She added that in her social circles, going through I.V.F. to choose the gender is “not unusual,” though the practice of gender selection is controversial . “I have multiple friends who have done it and are looking into doing it,” she said.

The infertility industry “has never really been regulated in terms of who can use it and for what reasons,” said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. He added that he hoped couples who opt for I.V.F. are aware of the limitations of the technology. “I want them to be informed,” he said.

Better as a Backup

Denise, 34, works in sales and marketing for a tech company and lives in Foster City, Calif. She and her husband and froze embryos when she was 31. (She asked not to use her last name, or name her husband, because some of their family members disapprove of their using I.V.F.)

“We had great insurance from my company job, so we did it,” she said. “It relieved the pressure because I didn’t know how many kids I wanted.”

She conceived her first child, who was born 11 months ago, naturally, and has three embryos frozen in the lab; she is strongly considering using one to have her second child.

“The older I get, the more risks there are of my baby having something,” she said. “It makes me ask myself, ‘If I use the embryo from when I was 31, will the baby be healthier?’” she said. “The embryos have also been tested, so at least I know the basics are OK.”

Dr. Lucky Sekhon, who also works at RMA of New York, the fertility clinic, noted that though preimplantation genetic testing of embryos is not perfect, it can ensure embryos have the right number of chromosomes, which reduces the odds of miscarriage.

Dr. Sekhon also believes that many couples should view I.V.F. as a backup, not a first, option. Many clients, she said, come to her thinking they have little chance of conceiving naturally when they are actually in good health to do so. “Most of these women can still have very healthy babies,” she said.

An exception is someone like Ms. El-Badry Nance, who has the BRCA gene mutation. “They know something runs in their family,” Dr. Sekhon said, “and those are reasons to avoid getting pregnant naturally.”

Doctors agree that I.V.F. is a numbers game, and the more frozen embryos you have to work with, the higher the chance of success since not all unfreeze or implant properly. Because of that, Dr. Sekhon believes most couples, if they can, should first try to conceive naturally before using frozen embryos.

“It’s much smarter to use your embryos when you really need to,” she said. “Isn’t it better to save them for a rainy day?”

But some couples disagree. As Ms. Hartley put it: “We have the science to do this. Let’s use it.”

An earlier version of this article misidentified the subject of genetic testing in Sarafina El-Badry Nance’s I.V.F. procedure. Her embryos, not her eggs, were screened for a BRCA gene mutation. The article also described incorrectly the prevalence of embryonic genetic testing. While many couples opt to conduct some form of genetic testing before an embryo transfer, such tests are not universal.

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