An HSP searches for meaning the way a plant grows towards the sun. We need it, and we persevere in seeking it, even when it’s a struggle.

J wrote to ask if I could write about the search for in-depth meaning in work and relationships. I asked if he could say more. I found his response moving and asked if I could share it with you. Here it is:

Lately I got a whatsapp from my older sister. She wrote that her biography would not be uninteresting. This message triggered me looking back at my life and seeing a struggle for meaning. I am 63 years old. I started in an insurance company as an IT specialist. Projects started, but many were interrupted before completion. After 5 years I went to a smaller company as an IT consultant. The atmosphere was certainly better, and I could develop my creative skills. But it did not feel like what I was meant to do.

Later on I started giving mindfulness to people with chronic pain at a university clinic. It felt very satisfying but it was only volunteer work for 2 hours a week. I wanted to build that up, but it interfered with my family. And I probably did not master the commercial skills to build it up either.

Family life also had its challenges. Although I certainly participated in the household and loved my children, I also needed time ‘off’. I did not meet my wife’s standards. When the kids were all adults, the marriage broke up. I started playing violin and finished craniosacral therapy. I now give craniosacral therapy as a volunteer to cancer patients (2 hours a week) while still on an IT job (now 3 days a week). To summarize the story. When I look back I feel like [I have been] struggling with life demands (work and family), and only from time to time putting a really meaningful stamp.

Courage and vulnerability

Thank you, J, for your willingness to share this with me and with everyone reading this. It requires courage to do what you are doing (and have been doing all these years): to step back and look at your life, asking, “Is this the life I want? Am I contributing in a way that feels meaningful to me?” I also requires great courage to share about it in this vulnerable way. In doing so, you help your fellow HSPs.

This, in itself, is a deeply meaningful act. I found comfort and encouragement reading your account. I believe others will as well. There is a sense of compassionate fellowship, contemplating the exquisite messiness of a fellow HSP trying to find purpose and meaning amidst the demands of earning a living, being a parent, and sustaining an intimate partnership. We’re each living our own version of that dance.

One of Elaine Aron’s key life tasks for HSPs is to spend time with other sensitive people. I hope others reading this will share their reactions and experiences around this most central challenge of our sensitive lives. We can’t relieve each other of the struggle, but we can accompany and appreciate each other. I wish for all of us to have that support.

Persistence and care

As I read about your life, J, I was struck by two themes: your deep care for others, and your persistence in seeking meaning. You supported your family doing IT work (care for others). Over time (persistence), you’ve realized that no IT job can provide the meaning you seek. You tried to build up the mindfulness work (persistence.) You let it go when you realized it was conflicting with your ability to be there for your wife and children (care for others.)

You tried to make the marriage work (persistence and care for others.) Ultimately, though, you ended up on your own. You trained in the new, meaningful work of craniosacral therapy (again, persistence and care for others.) Now, you have finally reached a point (persistence) where you can work less, giving you precious time off, time to volunteer and time to play the violin (care for yourself and others.)

Barry Neal Jaeger, who wrote a book I think you would appreciate, Making Work Work for the Highly Sensitive Person, would say that your IT work is a craft for you. You are very good at it. It’s not a calling, but it’s not drudgery either. This is key for you, because HSPs can’t tolerate drudgery. It takes a terrible toll on us. However, a well-paying “craft” job can be a viable strategy for us, provided that we have the kind of meaning elsewhere in our lives that you have worked hard to create, J.

My own partner used to work full time as a physical therapist. He’s very good at it, but it doesn’t light him up. Full time, it becomes drudgery for him. When he found his calling— international restorative dialogue work—he gradually cut back on his PT. He does almost none of this “craft” job now. But it provided a key piece of the financial puzzle for him for many years as he built up the dialogue work.

Mourning our limitations

Oprah Winfrey famously said, “You can have it all, just not all at once.” This is particularly and poignantly true for HSPs. We can try to “do it all,” but our bodies will inevitably put on the brakes. In that regard, starting a family is a big decision for an HSP, as you quickly found out, J. To stay sane in the midst of the family/work/meaning balancing process, we need to take time to acknowledge and mourn our limitations. Only then can we reaffirm why we chose the path we chose.

Elaine Aron goes so far as to advises couples including an HSP to arrange for one person to work half time or less. If it’s the HSP working full time, they are in for an intense decade. Having children is a miraculous, life-changing experience. It’s also demanding. You have little time for yourself, and even less if you are working. J, you experienced another consequence of this reality: with so little free time, you felt even more pressure to find a job that could serve as your primary source of meaning.

How do we find depth and meaning while supporting ourselves and our families? How do we find a way to take care of ourselves in the midst of all that? In the end, I think we can only answer these questions by living them, as Rilke said to his young poet. J, you have done that. You continue to do it. It isn’t easy. Yet the effort itself is profoundly meaningful: it comprises a life. You need people you can celebrate with and mourn with along the way. Thank you, J, for allowing us to do that.

Photo by Shapelined on Unsplash
Note: This newsletter is 100% human. I wrote it, with no AI assistance.