“I constantly think about what a meaningful life looks like. I'm constantly asking myself, ‘Why am I doing this?’”

Philosopher Roman Krznaric, in conversation with Emily Shipp

As I sit here, hot chocolate in hand on a darkening afternoon in Berlin, I realise it is almost exactly two years since I interviewed the philosopher Roman Krznaric about meaningful work. Two years! In that time I’ve started, stalled, thought and rethought my own approaches to meaning and purpose - and had a baby, which, it’s fair to say, brought about some fairly radical changes. But amidst all this I have often come back to Roman’s ideas on empathy and ‘outrospection’. So much so that for some time I have been meaning to do a better job of explaining these ideas and why they are so relevant to the world we find unravelling around us.

Roman is fascinated by questions about how we should live and what makes for a meaningful life, as I am. But what is refreshing is that he raises these questions not in an introspective, navel-gazing sense, but in relation to others, to the wider world and to our fundamentally human sense of empathy. And it is this that makes his thoughts more relatable and more relevant than ever. What Roman describes in his talks and books [links] is the value of honest connection with others in our quest for a meaningful life.

What The World Needs Vs. What I Need

What the world needs isn’t always what we are willing to give and what we need isn’t always possible or sustainable. In any consideration about meaning and purpose there is a tension between self and other. But there is a balancing point between the two where our own talents and interests - and the things that make us feel like our best selves - meet the needs of others/the world.

Roman illustrates this as the realms of ‘social change’ and the ‘art of living’: “I'm interested in ideas, topics, practices, which are about how we live our life as individuals (the art of living) but that also contribute to wider social, political or ecological transformation (social change)”. Purposeful work exists at the overlap:

And, at the heart of social change - or understanding what the world needs - is empathy….

Empathy and The Age of Outrospection

For Roman, empathy is wide ranging – “it’s about how you and I understand each other and about how a couple gets on, but it’s also about how you challenge slavery”. Empathy is about issues close to home and close to our hearts as much as it is about connection with people who are very different from us: “It's creating those human connections, stepping outside myself by talking to strangers… These are the things which have changed my life.”

Most importantly, Roman sees empathy as a way of cultivating outrospection:

“If you want to understand who you are and what to do, you can look inside yourself. That's been the classic method of the 20th century, from Freud to Oprah - introspection. The opposite is outrospection - discovering who you are and how to live by stepping outside yourself, discovering the lives of other people, other cultures. I think empathy is the ultimate art form of creating a 21st century age of outrospection.”

A lot of what is written about finding purpose and meaning is heavily self-centric and – as Roman would say – introspective. Self-help gurus encourage us to ‘search inside’ for answers: to look to our deeper selves. The contrast is to look outwards. To discover what the world needs and what other people need.

This heavily self-centric approach to purpose-seeking can feel narcissistic. I have seen too many examples of it online and it results in a self-serving and ultimately restrictive approach to finding meaning in life and work. We need to find the balancing point between self and other and it is just as short-sighted to focus solely on ourselves as it is to focus solely on others. Empathy is our counterbalance in a society set on individualism.

Roman is the founder of The Empathy Museum, which explores how empathy can transform personal relationships as well as tackle global challenges such as prejudice, conflict and inequality. It includes an exhibit called “Walk a mile in my shoes” which uses empathy to connect people from – quite literally – different walks of life.

Empathy is central to what it is to be human. Our orientation towards others and our capacity to feel for them is deep within our nature. It is – arguably - what inspires our most important work, in terms of its impact on the wider world.

Looking out at what the world needs is also, simply, the right thing to do. We have a planet that needs us, people that need us, species on the brink of extinction. The world is full of problems to address. And in addressing them we have the potential to become more complete, more satisfied, more socially engaged versions of ourselves.

The challenge for humanity as we stand today, according to Roman, is to find better ways to balance the individual and the collective good.

“The 20th century was an age not just of introspection but of individualism. In the 21st century, how are we going to create collective values and find a better balance between individual and collective?”