This new text describes the meaning found in the ordinary and familiar occupations that make up the routines of our everyday lives. Meaning and Occupation: Essentials for Everyday Life is about occupation as an experience rather than occupation as a task. Occupation as experience is occupation as it is perceived through our senses, as it is lived through, as it is experienced. From an occupational perspective, the occupations of our lives and the meanings of those occupations are essential contributors to the pace and direction of the life flow. The initial chapters in the book address the concepts of meaningfulness and meaninglessness in our lives as well as meaning and occupation. Subsequent chapters focus on the primary ways in which daily occupation contributes to meaning in our lives - as a source of connectedness to others, as a force for well-being and lifespan development, as a source of meaning in disability, and as a repository of creativity and spirituality. Cultural contributions to meaningful occupation and the contributions of experiential space and place are discussed. Quotations and stories from the author's phenomenological research on occupation and from her own life experiences, as well as illustrations from literature and the visual arts, are used liberally throughout the book.