The search for relevance
It may not be meaning you’re after, but a reason.
While the search for meaning might send us wandering into the clouds of philosophy and spirituality, the search for relevance is a much more grounded, practical pursuit.
If meaning is about why we are here, relevance is about where we fit. It is the quest for a niche; that specific intersection where our unique skills, temperament and efforts actually “click” with the world around us.
Finding this niche is less about discovering a divine calling and more about achieving functional alignment.
We all harbour a deep-seated need to be useful, to be the right tool for a specific job. When you are irrelevant, you are a passenger in your own life, but when you are relevant, you become an essential gear in a larger machine.
This distinction is crucial because meaning can be entirely solitary — you can find it in a sunset or a private thought — but relevance requires an environment. You can’t be relevant in a vacuum.
A niche provides a boundary that, paradoxically, offers freedom. In a world of infinite, exhausting choices, relevance narrows the field. It provides a sense of gravity that anchors us to our communities and our work.
The search for this niche is rarely a lightning-bolt moment of inspiration; instead, it is a gritty process of elimination involving trial and error, and the honest cultivation of skill.
The search for relevance requires looking at the gaps in a community or an industry and asking not just “What do I want?” but “What is needed that only I can provide?” It is the transition from being a generalist drifting through life to being a specialist rooted in a purpose.
Ultimately, there is a profound, quiet dignity in finding where you belong. It moves the focus away from the existential “Who am I?” and toward the effective “What can I do?”
When you find that niche, the world stops feeling like a place you are merely visiting and starts feeling like a place you are helping to build. It is the difference between being a spectator and being a participant.
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