In this chapter, the authors consider meaning and meaningfulness. They explain that meaning is not only experienced as the sense we make of something or what it signifies, but also the process through which the sense is made. Meaningfulness derives not only from how significant we judge our experiences to be, but also from the process of allowing this sense of significance to emerge over time. The authors explore these concepts in the context of what people do in their philanthropy and the impact they create. They then extend the discussion to how meaning can also be experienced in association with people’s object self, agentic self and meta-self.
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