One crucial advantage of meaning is that it is not limited to the immediately present stimulus
environment. Meaningful thought allows people to think about past, future, and spatially distant
realities (and indeed even possibilities). Related to that, meaning can integrate events across time.
Purpose, one important component of meaningfulness, entails that present events draw meaning
from future ones. The examples listed above of meaningful but unhappy lives (e.g., oppressed
political activist) all involve working toward some future goal or outcome, such that the future
outcome is highly desirable even though the present activities may be unpleasant. Meaningfulness
may therefore often involve understanding one’s life beyond the here and now, integrating future
and past. In contrast, happiness, as a subjective feeling state, exists essentially in the present
moment. At most, happiness in the form of life satisfaction may integrate some degree of the past
into the present — but even so, it evaluates the past from the point of view of the present. Most
people would probably not report high life satisfaction on the basis of having had a good past but
while being currently miserable.