Book excerpt: "The Meaning of Your Life" by Arthur C. Brooks

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In his latest book, "The Meaning of Your Life" (to beryllium published March 31 by Portfolio), New York Times bestselling writer Arthur C. Brooks writes of a taste crisis: an summation successful anxiousness and depression, concurrent with a emergence successful societal media use, that is impinging upon our quality to find intent successful life, during what helium presumption an "Age of Emptiness."

Read an excerpt below, and don't miss Brooks connected "CBS Sunday Morning" March 22!

"The Meaning of Your Life" by Arthur C. Brooks

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In January of 2009, I temporarily near my field home, taking a ten-year hiatus to beryllium the president of a large nonprofit enactment successful Washington, DC, and didn't instrumentality until the autumn of 2019. I ever intended to instrumentality to academia, and aft a decade, I discontinue my enforcement occupation and accepted a presumption astatine Harvard University. My volition was to get backmost the optimism and vigor students had ever fixed maine successful times past—to get backmost home.

But erstwhile I returned, it was precise unheimlich. The ambiance had darkened, arsenic larger and larger percentages of students were suffering from slump and anxiety. At immoderate colleges and universities, much than fractional of students were receiving intelligence wellness treatment. My bureau hours were much similar counseling sessions than tutoring. Hope and optimism seemed similar they had been replaced by choler and sadness. And fear: students feared vulnerability to ideas they recovered objectionable and made them consciousness emotionally unsafe, and module were terrified to lecture connected thing that mightiness offend the students.

I saw the situation connected campus, but that was conscionable wherever it was astir evident and disposable to me. Depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and choler were cropping up everywhere, particularly among young adults. Pretty soon, everyone was talking astir a intelligence wellness crisis. The percent of American adolescents with symptoms of large slump nearly tripled from 2005 to 2019, portion anxiousness astir doubled. According to the General Social Survey, the percent of American adults of each ages who are "not excessively happy" astir their lives had much than doubled from 2000 to 2023. Women were deed particularly hard: 45 percent of pistillate Americans betwixt ages 12 and twenty-six had received a ceremonial diagnosis of anxiousness oregon slump by 2024. From 2004 until 2024, the percent of women 30 and nether who said their intelligence wellness was "excellent" plummeted, from 48 percent to 15 percent.

What the information show—and what everyone has seen with our ain eyes—is what we societal scientists telephone a psychogenic epidemic, a improvement that causes tremendous suffering but has nary integrated cause, meaning the onset is societal oregon psychological, not biological. As a specializer successful the subject of happiness, I people began penning and speaking publically astir this epidemic, searching for its cause. And arsenic I did this work, I recovered thing adjacent much mysterious: those who should beryllium the best off—the hardworking strivers astatine places similar my university—were really suffering the most.

Over the people of my probe into the origin of the epidemic, I started by looking astatine the fashionable explanations we each hear. A precise communal 1 is that young adults person gotten a bait-and-switch from older generations, who promised them that if they worked hard and played by the rules, they would person a large life. Instead, they recovered that houses are impossibly costly successful the cities that connection the astir rewarding jobs, and raising kids gets harder each year. Meanwhile, the societal information and aesculapian systems they are paying into volition beryllium bankrupt by the clip they are old. On apical of that, determination are looming biology threats, rising inequality, and a big of different problems. Thanks for each the bare promises and the screwed-up world, boomers.

On the different side, older radical assertion that the occupation is young adults themselves, with their expected civilization of indulgence, narcissism, and entitlement. When galore radical my property perceive the ailment that beingness is truthful overmuch worse today, and that they had things truthful overmuch easier successful the aged days, they conscionable rotation their eyes. When their big kids speech astir biology problems, they callback increasing up with smog-choked free-ways, burning rivers, and nuclear-bomb drills during the Cold War. When they perceive however unaffordable lodging is, they're apt to constituent retired the lousy flat they rented—with a rolled-up futon successful the country and a two-ring burner to navigator on—when they were starting out.

But neither of these scapegoating explanations holds water. They conscionable blasted a heavy philosophical and intelligence occupation connected different generation's selfishness. There's thing caller astir that: every generation resents their elders and past looks down connected "kids these days." But this psychogenic epidemic is existent and unprecedented.

A much scholarly mentation focuses connected what radical are doing to entertain and distract themselves—generally, staring down astatine their phones. In my ain research, I find a wide narration betwixt societal media usage and affectional problems. As a wide rule, the much clip you walk looking astatine your phone, the much depressed, lonely, and anxious you volition become.

It inactive leaves the large mystery, however, of what radical are missing—what they genuinely privation but can't find portion they scroll distant for hours. The overuse of tech is simply a soothing behaviour due to the fact that thing important is absent successful their lives—and this behaviour is astir apt besides making that something harder to find. It's similar intoxicant oregon recreational drugs, which radical often maltreatment erstwhile what they truly privation successful life—hope, opportunity, love—is absent, but which makes their occupation worse.

What is it that the young strivers truthful profoundly crave but can't find? And why can't they find it? I needed much than information and statistic to reply this, truthful I started asking radical to archer maine their stories.

And successful interrogation aft interview, their stories illuminated the data. The situation we look contiguous goes overmuch deeper than, say, unaffordability oregon generational entitlement. We person recovered ourselves successful a taste situation of meaning.

Excerpted from "The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose successful an Age of Emptiness" by Arthur C. Brooks, successful statement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Arthur C. Brooks.

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