Finding Meaning in The Pitt
The Pitt is a trashy-but-great medical drama that, surprisingly, has a lot to teach us about finding meaning in our work and lives.
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Transcript
The Pitt is a medical drama that's compressed into a single ER shift, which we experience hour by hour. It's an endless night of blood, grief, and impossible choices.
The staff are subjected to an endless onslaught of suffering and death. They never have enough time or resources to do the job as well as they’d like, and they’re constantly downstream from problems they’re powerless to solve.
And yet, mostly they endure.
How? Why keep going when everything says stop?
They keep going because this work matters, because it has meaning.
Meaning might seem simple, but it is not at all.
And this soapy, slightly trashy but also great TV show actually can teach us a lot about finding meaning and creating meaning.
In my last video, Infinite Remix, I asked: “What should we make, when we can make anything?” The answer is we make work that matters.
And making work that matters means you need to find meaning and create meaning.
So... what is meaning?
The writer Emily Esfahani Smith identifies four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence.
Purpose
Let's start with purpose, because in The Pitt the purpose is clear.
This is emergency medicine: save who can be saved, help who can be helped, protect the team, hold the line.
This kind of stark purpose goes a long way toward creating meaning.
The character Cassie McKay probably didn't have meaning in her life for a long time. She came to medicine later in life after being an addict. She's lost custody of her son. She wears an ankle monitor because of an ugly fight with her ex's girlfriend.
Emergency medicine for her is an answer. She’s chosen medicine to stitch her own life back together while she stitches others' bodies back together.
That's purpose.
Purpose is a box that everybody on The Pitt has ticked, no problem.
And for the rest of us, purpose doesn't need to be as dramatic as saving lives. Purpose can be about contributing to communities, caring for others, bettering ourselves, and following our principles.
But purpose alone won't carry you. We also need belonging.
Belonging
Belonging means being valued for who you truly are. Smith contrasts this with “cheap belonging,” where your value depends on conforming or maintaining certain beliefs. True belonging is about being valued for the real you.
Belonging is about feeling seen, recognized, and cared for by others, and returning that care in kind.
The character Trinity Santos rubs everybody the wrong way at first. She's loud, abrasive, all edge. She’s there to prove herself, not to belong.
But as her flaws and strengths become apparent, the team begins to see her resilience and honesty, and she’s slowly woven into the group. She softens a little, but more importantly, she’s valued for who she really is.
Belonging is incredibly basic, human stuff, but it is undervalued in this hyper-individualistic age.
But belonging, too, can be fragile. It can falter, when it does we need to lean on another pillar: story.
Storytelling
Storytelling is our narrative that makes sense of events and our identity.
The Pitt is, of course, a story, but the characters are also telling each other stories and themselves too.
Nurse Dana Evans was born at the hospital she now works at and volunteered there as a teenager. It is her place in this world. But after getting sucker-punched, that story shatters, and she doubts she can go on.
She returns, because her story is that she’s the one who keeps the floor alive. And that story buys her some time so that she can find a new story that can keep her going beyond today. We'll see where this leads in Season 2.
But even all three of these pillars might not be enough. Sometimes they all collapse and the only thing left is the final pillar of meaning. transcendence.
Transcendence
Transcendence is found in moments that lift us beyond the self into something vast and dignifying. Transcendence gets you through when your defeat is total and there are no other answers.
In The Pitt transcendence arrives for the lead character Michael "Robby" Robinavitch after the death of his stepson's girlfriend at a mass shooting. He sits in children's unit that's been turned into morgue and recites the Shema (shuh-ma), one of the central prayers of Judaism. For a moment, his grief is held inside something older, deeper, and more vast than this hospital.
Transcendence is the hardest part of meaning for many of us to find. It's mostly been the dominion of religion and and lot of us are no longer religious.
But you can find transcendence elsewhere. You can find it in beauty, in awe of nature, in the flow of creation, in gratitude, and in rituals, even simple ones like shared meals or book clubs.
Transcendence is probably something you get from outside your work. Leave space in your life so you can find it. Because when things are at their worst, transcendence is what can get you through.
The four pillars of meaning each have a role in making our work and lives matter.
Purpose gives you direction. Belonging gives you connection. Storytelling makes it make sense. And transcendence lifts us beyond ourselves.
The Pitt shows how the components of meaning don’t arrive in order, and they don’t stay put. You need to find them over and over again.
So to make work that matters, answer these questions for yourself.
What purpose will you serve?
Who will you belong to?
What story will you tell?
What will you reach for beyond yourself?
The Pitt is not only about saving patients. It’s about saving meaning, hour by hour, person by person, so the work can continue, and so that your life can be worth its cost.