What Actually Gives Life Meaning?

The first time I read Ecclesiastes, it barely registered.

That was about a year and a half ago, when I was trying to figure out my way through the Bible. I remember thinking it felt contradictory, and kinda bleak. I don’t think I finished it. Whatever the case, it didn't have an effect. I moved on.

Then a couple months ago, I was pulled back to it.

I reconnected with a college buddy I hadn’t spoken to in over 25 years. As he was telling me about his church near Franklin, Tennessee, I clicked around their website out of curiosity. I noticed a men’s group studying Ecclesiastes. The title of the series: The Meaning of Life.

That felt like a loaded phrase to casually scroll past.

It piqued my interest enough to go back to the Bible and open to Ecclesiastes. This time I read it slower. With more context. With a little more awareness of who Solomon was and the life he had lived. But, as with most of the Bible, I still didn’t fully get it...it's pretty dense. So I watched YouTube videos. The Bible Project. Read several summaries. I kept digging.

Do I now have some iron-clad answer to the meaning of life? Or what gives life meaning?

No. Of course not.

But the one word that kept being repeated, "meaningless", really got to me. Some translations say “vanity.” Others say “vapor” or “breath.” Same Hebrew word. Hebel.

It bothered me. Still does.

Life cannot be meaningless. I can’t accept that. And yet, I also can’t ignore how quickly everything seems to be forgotten. Or not passed down. I barely knew only one of my grandparents, so I don’t know much about even that generation. Let alone their parents or beyond. I don’t know their stories. I don’t know their struggles. I vaguely know where they came from and I'm not even sure about that. The old saying is true...at some point, every grave goes unvisited. I’m sure mine isn’t the only family where we don’t even know where the graves are.

More than that, except for the most exceptional of us, we're all eventually forgotten.

That realization sucks...if you take a minute to think about it.

Ecclesiastes didn’t make me nihilistic. It made me think about legacy in a way I hadn’t before. Not legacy in the “be remembered forever” sense, but in a much smaller, more personal one.

What are we actually here for? What's the meaning?

For me, meaning has slowly narrowed, not expanded.

First and foremost, it comes back to family. Mine is complicated, like most are. A while back, I wrote a book about life lessons learned through sports, and one entire chapter was about the people who shaped me and how I’m shaping my kids. That wasn’t accidental.

Just last week, a pastor friend rocked my world when he shared a story about a mentor who suggested that he and his wife write their own eulogies. From the perspectives of your spouse and children.

Wow. Never thought that way before. Now my wife and I are going to do it.

How do I want my family to describe me when I’m gone?

I’m not concerned about being remembered by great-great-grandkids who will never meet me. I don’t expect to leave some massive mark on the world. I don’t need my name attached to anything lasting. I don't think my ego is that big.

What I want is much simpler.

I want my kids, and hopefully their kids, to think of me as a good man. Someone who tried his best. Someone who loved them. Someone who helped them become good people.

And in the last several months, something has clicked for me, later than it probably should have. A big part of them becoming good people isn’t just what Karen and I teach them or model for them. It’s helping them understand that they were made for a purpose. That God is with them and in them.

If you had asked me at different stages of my life what my purpose was, or what I derived meaning from, you would have gotten very different answers.

As a kid: sports.

Later: figuring out my career.

Then: being respected as a leader.

Then: providing well for my family.

Each answer fit the season I was in.

Now? I know my purpose is rooted in family and faith. Beyond that, I’m honestly still not sure yet.

Maybe that’s why I wrote my first book.

Maybe that’s why this Bible series has stirred something in me.

Maybe that’s why I briefly thought I wanted to speak into the chaos of youth sports and parenting.

Maybe it’s why I keep circling back to the idea of helping young adults, especially athletes, as they transition into real life.

I don’t know where any of that leads.

What I do know is that, for someone who grew up with skepticism and doubts about God and Jesus, I’m learning to put this in God’s hands in a way I never really did before. Not to avoid responsibility. Not to shrug and say “whatever happens, happens.” But to trust that if I’m off track, I’ll be nudged. Redirected. Corrected. Like I have been before.

Is all of this technically what Ecclesiastes is trying to say?

Whether it is or not that's what I took from it.

The book forced me to wrestle with how quickly things pass, how little control we really have, and what’s actually worth caring about.

If you decide to read it, or dig into it with a guide or a video or a group, I’d be genuinely curious what it stirs in you. Not what conclusions you land on, but what it makes you think about.

Maybe that’s enough for now.