As a psychotherapist I have long held the belief that to successfully navigate the hell that is life, you need a sense of purpose and meaning. Now lots of people manage this on an unconscious level mostly because they either use work or children as their means of establishing these two goals.

There are several problems with using these two stalwarts, when it comes to work, the obvious failing is best explained in the saying ‘only a new brush, brushes clean.’ I was told this by my granddad a long time ago now, and it actually took me several years to work out what he meant – though I think this might just be because I’m a little slow at times. He told me this not long after I’d started a new job; I think I was raving about how exciting it was – and of course the meaning of the saying is that basically, ‘things change’.

And these days, if you believe the stats, most people are bored in their job after six months, and they start looking for another job after the first year – that’s only looking though, because most people stick in a job far longer than they would actually like, because of another saying, ‘it’s better the devil you know.’

Even if you manage to find the perfect job that allows you to feel a strong sense of purpose what happens when you retire? Sadly, quite often you die within the year of giving up your job – not the ideal way to end a productive career, dying within six months of getting your gold watch!

The other mainstay that some people use for giving their lives P&M, is to have children. Children, being a ‘want’ not a ‘need’, in these days of consumer driven lifestyles serve several uses.

They deal with one of the age old existential worries – who will look after me in my old age? Whether the children will or not, when you have a child you can at least believe, for a while at least, that they will.

Many people also use their child to live out their own failed dreams ‘my boy’s going to be a footballer when he grows up!’ or some such other nonsense. Sadly, and more usually, the dreams that you have for your children would require work – if you wanted your child to be a football star, that would mean taking them to practice every night, paying for kit, taking them to games – and the average parent that is trying to live out their dreams through their children is unlikely to actually bother to put in the necessary work – they never put the work in needed to see out their own dreams, why would they bother with someone else’s?

Seemingly the worst thing about using children to establish P&M is the effect children have on 40somethings. 9 billion is spent in the UK on anti-depressants every year and a lot of this is due to people using children to give their life meaning. Because children leave, and establish their own lives, part of which means detaching themselves from their parents – stepping out on their own.

And where does this leave the parent who has put their lives into that child? With Empty-Nest Syndrome. The main treatment of which seems to be either tablets (which are far too readily prescribed, and taken, in the developed world), or self-medication.

Self-medication, for the masses, these days being alcohol and reality TV. Did you know that if you drink half bottle of wine a night (or the equivalent, for those who are saying “I don’t drink wine, I have ten beers but no wine”), you class as having a drink problem? And of course if you waste 90 hours of your life watching Big Brother, (this would be if you only watch one hour a night for every night it’s on during the summer) then please, please, turn to drink – it’s a far more productive use of your time. I really don’t think they’ll stop making reality TV shows until someone dies – but then if the viewing figures go up because of the death, then who knows where that’ll lead.

So if you can’t count on your job or children then what should you do? You would think that given I have neither of these two things that I’d be able to tell you. Of course I can’t, I’m not sure anyone can, but I can of course speculate.

First I have to say that that when I’ve practiced as a counsellor the common theme that comes through all the sessions is that people ‘want to be happy!’ The number of times I’ve heard ‘I just want to be happy, everyone else is happy and it’s not fair that I’m not!’ To which I normally reply by slapping them round their faces and telling them to ‘pull themselves together!’ – Not really, but I often think it would be a better treatment than hours of therapy.

If you think about it, if you’ve never tasted anything cold, how would you know the food you’re eating is hot? Life is a continual set of comparisons; if that is pretty, then that must be ugly. How do you really know that you like something if you are unsure what you dislike – you need to be able to compare (and contrast – god I hated those essays at college).

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