Happiness and a meaningful life are inseparable. You may know people who appear to have whatever good fortune can give and are nevertheless desperately unhappy. And there are others who in the midst of raw misery are deeply at peace and—well, genuinely happy. See if you can find where the difference lies. When we go deep enough, we find that the happy ones have found the one thing which the others are lacking: meaning in life. But we should not call meaning a “thing.” It is, in fact, the one reality in our life which is nothing. Nor should we say that someone has found meaning, as if, once found, meaning could be safely kept for darker days. Meaning must be constantly received, like the light to which we must open our eyes here and now, if we want to see.
— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Life by Brother David Steindl-Rast
