The 3rd Line: A Framework for Maximizing Life’s Meaning
Figuring out life’s priorities is a messy job unless you’re one of the lucky few who have their heads screwed on the right way, all the time. When decisions make us scratch our heads and choose between multiple choices, the “what the hell should I do?” question lights up. Off we go calculating the cost and benefits, making thing harder and more ambiguous than they already are. Or maybe we just say “screw it, I’m just going to do what I feel like right now,’’ without really asking if it’d be great for our future selves.
But what if these choices could be visualized in a graph as to their impact on your long term (i.e. real) happiness and be distilled down to a framework? It would exist as a powerful tool for you to reach for should the question inevitably come up.
The Setup
The main assumption I’ll make here is that you also want to increase your long term happiness and leave this world with the maximum amount of meaning, content with not only what you’ve achieved and enjoyed, but how you’ve lived.
This framework’s primary premise is that everything in this world has a beginning, middle, and end. This includes human dynasties, startups and acquisition, economic booms and busts, the rise and fall of empires, the evolution and extinction of entire species, even the birth and death of stars. You get the idea. As humans, each of us are born, go through adolescence, and if fortunate enough, grow into old age, and eventually buried. I will refer to this as the “natural law”.
The graph has a run axis of time and a rise axis for meaning, holding between them three “life lines” representing distinct sources of meaning and happiness over the course of our lifetime. Keep in mind that each line is loosely named because this is kind of like an economic model for life, and models typically are oversimplified to get the main points across. So that means you can easily add money to body and career (1st line), put pets in together with family and friends (second line), or add terms like virtue and soul to character and values (3rd line).
Lastly, you might’ve noticed that I use “meaning”, “happiness”, and “purpose” interchangeably because I’m assuming we agree that living a meaningful life with purpose is a pretty decent path to long term happiness and (here’s another interchangeable word!) “contentment”.
Okay, let’s get to it.
The 1st Line
The 1st line represents our physical bodies and our mental acuity, both of which contribute to our ability to work and progress in our careers. This line follows the natural law of beginning, middle and end. We’re born as infants, play as kids, mature into adults, perhaps become useful or even prominent members of society. However, at some point, our bodies and minds will hit a peak and invariably start declining. This wall is called aging.
If at this point we still tie our happiness and purpose to this line, then they’ll all get pulled down too. It’s especially painful when we falsely extrapolate the upwards trajectory of our twenties, thirties, and forties too far into the future, ignoring the inevitability of our physical decline. If we’re not ready for this reality then there’ll be a day when we’ll fret over every wrinkle and grey hair, as if it were some great unnatural evil. This is what we would call aging “ungracefully”, and is unfortunately the very path we’re always pushed on by modern culture.
We’re often biased to use present snapshots to project into the future, assuming that progress will go on indefinitely. The bigger the gap is between our expectations and reality, the more disillusioned and unhappy we are when the natural decline finally hits like a pile of bricks.
The same can be said when we feel edged out at work as younger colleagues seem to catch up quicker by the year, or what we excel in is no longer needed in the job market. Obviously these all carry serious financial consequences, but if we further attach our very identities and sense of purpose to them, we risk being even more unhappy, and ultimately far less effective at getting what we want.
Out of all the lines, we have the least control over this one, despite it representing our own bodies. While we can eat well, exercise, and use science and technology to push this line further to the right, but in the end, we’re just delaying the inevitable. The more we deny this, the more fragile we become. It’s also by far the most at risk line thanks to its vulnerability to external factors — we are after all the single point of failure. Any recession, accident or sickness can cause it to make a sharp U-turn, and what then — will life just lose all purpose?
What’s worse is when we build our 2nd line, the one representing family and friends, on top of the 1st. Relationships based mainly on physical attractiveness and career success will dissipate when the 1st line goes down hill, and carry with it any solace we thought was remaining in friends and partners.
But don’t worry, help’s on the way.
The 2nd Line
The 2nd line is our family and friends. It’s one of our most important sources of meaning. When we’re children, our friends and parents were the pillars that held up our world. As we mature into adults through life’s many struggles, those same relationships begin to thin and the ones that remain take on an even deeper connection, destined lifelong friends who are like kin.
If we are lucky enough to have loving parents or wise enough to strike up good friends, then the 2nd line will probably replace the 1st line as the main source of happiness, which happens just as our bodies begin its decline. The self-healing properties of understanding and forgiveness in this line makes it super robust. The fruits of this line are fertilized by the combined generosity of everyone in your circle.
It also follows the natural law. Kids grow up and move away. A lively house will one day become an empty nest that only revives once a year during the holidays. Life long partners and friends will follow their individual 1st lines and eventually leave life itself.
Even in our relative youth, we may face the unspeakably painful passing away of beloved siblings, mothers and fathers. Several of my close friends bravely faced exactly that in recent years.
Heartbreaks, separations and betrayals can all seriously hurt us and make us feel like life’s not worth it without them. These may not be part of natural law, but they are part of life.
This line is both a source of overflowing happiness and a place of extraordinary pain, since you can’t have one without the other. We get hurt and grief because we care and love, but if we shift the entire weight of our purpose on this line, we’ll feel despair beyond repair when it changes course over time or at any time. For the sake of preserving ourselves from undue anguish, there needs to be a third option to hold the line.
The 3rd Line
The 3rd line represents our character. It is the thing that humans felt, pondered, debated, and written about since ancient times. While it still follows natural law, ending when our lives end; or not, depending on what you believe in, or if your name happens to be Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus and someone uncovers your personal journal (i.e. the “Meditations”).
This line isn’t forced to bow its head in the presence of age. Instead it’s free to continue upwards, downwards, or onwards at our wish, and the way we control it is based on how we treat ourselves (1st line) and others (2nd line).
The 3rd line is the supreme source of agency and fulfillment, self-sufficient and undisturbed by every day drama. It acts as a guiding line for tough choices, a line of defense against distractions, and a line of hope to hold onto when everything else seems to be falling apart.
In practice, this means aging gracefully, pursuing activities and connections that will be rewarding at any point in our lives not only in our youth. It means befriending people for the sake of friendship and service rather than for wealth or status. It’s choosing to go running even when it sucks to be out. It’s seeing responsibility as a vote of confidence rather than an onerous burden. It’s sacrificing a lucrative business opportunity in order to be at the bedside of a dying loved one, and then not allowing the seemingly unbearable grief to out stay its welcome when it is time to move on.
While we have little say over what life chucks at us, be it our aging bodies, bumpy careers or what others do, we can control how we perceive and deal with both the highs and lows. At every junction in life, we can either use it as an opportunity to build our character and create more meaning in our lives, or let our negative impulses pull us down. No one can make that choice for us.
Traveling along the 3rd line is our solo hero’s journey, composed of personal experiences, actions, thoughts, and choices. The Stoic philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius nailed it when he wrote:
“The directing mind becomes invincible when it withdraws into its own self-sufficiency. That is why a mind free from passions is a fortress: people have no stronger place of retreat, and someone taking refuge here is impregnable.”
It’s precisely this solitary quality that makes the 3rd line so invincible. It can’t be harmed by any external factors unless we invite them in.
Integrity: Prioritizing the Life Lines
Integrity is having the awareness to recognize and the discipline to correctly prioritize the life lines, making sure that the 1st line never gets put above the 2nd and the 2nd never above the 3rd.
It’s not rocket science, but often it can be hard to make the right choice in the moment especially if you haven’t gotten your lines prioritized and drawn. Integrity is the traffic controller that makes sure the lines don’t cross and crash. When you have this clarity and discipline, life becomes less ambiguous and it’s easier to live by our choices. Contrast this to the ever expanding wants and buyer’s regret that modernity plants in us.
It’s certainly not easy, but was there ever anything meaningful that was? I’ll leave you with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:
“We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us.”
My Story
My 2nd line took a vertical nose dive in 2019, which jump started a long journey of introspection. Since then, I’ve labored my way back to baseline. However, thanks to this process I was able to observe interesting interactions between the lines.
Just like how our decisions on the 1st and 2nd lines affect the the 3rd line, cultivating our character also elevates our relationships, careers, and health.
By taking daily small steps towards improving myself through philosophical study and emotional reflection, I’ve been able to connect with my friends in new vulnerable and rewarding ways. It’s made me more appreciative of my parents’ love and support, even if we might never see eye to eye. It’s opened up new perspectives about my career and more honest dialogues with colleagues. It’s allowed me to overcome my daily resistance to running despite spraining my ankle on, no joke, day one of marathon training.
It’s so easy for the lines trip over each other on a daily basis, and most of the time, we don’t even realize it. But that also means each day provides new opportunities to test our handle on ourselves and our relationships with others. Though not every step will be the right one, having a clear goal and some visualization goes a long way.
This is the original draft of The 3rd Line in my notebook.
My question to you: What’s one small action you can take this week to make big progress on your 3rd line?
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