is your search for life’s meaning making your life feel meaningless?
as basically everything continues to spiral out of control in america (and around the world), i see more and more people aching to find out the “point of it all” – the bigger reason or reasons why this is happening now or at all. in the midst of, or more accurately as a result of, asking these questions, people find themselves growing more and more overwhelmed. convinced there’s nothing they can do to change any of it – “what can one person do when all of this seems insurmountable?” and it’s leading me to ask:
what if the point of it all is it all?
what if the point of life is life itself? living.
and with that in mind, shouldn’t we be trying to do good – not the most perfect, but GOOD – if this is all we’re going to get?
if there’s no bigger point, shouldn't we be trying to maximize our time here with efforts big and small?
if we’re never actually going to get an answer to these large questions and these large questions also seem to be making us feel meaningless and pointless and hopeless, maybe life is simply about asking them while doing what we can to make this experience as good for ourselves and others as we can vs. finding out the answers and using them to direct our choices, decisions, and lives.
this entire topic is one of the key tenets of absurdism, which veers from nihilism in that it suggests the search for meaning in life is meaningless and one should accept the absurd and create your life’s own meaning vs. nihilism’s key tenet which suggests that both life itself and the search for its meaning are meaningless and pointless. “absurdism is the philosophical theory that the universe is irrational and meaningless. it states that trying to find meaning leads people into conflict with a seemingly meaningless world…it is traditionally identified as the confrontation of [a] rational [person] with an irrational world or as the attempt to grasp something based on reasons even though it is beyond the limits of rationality” (shoutout to wiki). while i don’t know that i fully believe all of the tenets of absurdism, i do have to admit that human existence (and any existence for that matter) as a whole is pretty absurd when i think about it more deeply – i consider it both a statistical inevitably and improbability that we’re here right now. with that in mind, i’ve halted my personal searches for an externally-defined meaning or significance to provide my life with some worth. i truly do believe how i live my life determines its meaning, and further, just living my life is proof of its meaning. even when i make mistakes and have to pivot and start over again and again.
i don’t want to encourage lack of philosophical curiosity with these words, nor do i think i will; however, i do think we’ve found ourselves confronted with an intoxicating level of “overwhelm” – paralyzing anxiety that convinces us that we’re here alone and lost but some significance will be revealed in the near to distant future, and in the meantime, we can rail about how awful everything is and wait to ultimately get pointed in the right direction for our next step.
i’m arguing that we can define that right direction for ourselves. right now. we can say the small things we’re doing are our calling or our purpose. instead of trying to figure out exactly where we fit or how, we can learn to accept that we already fit and do A thing. anything. we don’t have to find the perfect thing or the thing we were “brought here to do.” how many of us will truly ever know what that thing is? what if it’s many things? what if it’s nothing? what if we’re just here and who you are and what you’re meant to do is just be you? the fact that you’re here is meaningful.
make your own meaning.
as i narrow down the ways i’ll continue to show up for my communities and the planet this year and going forward, i’ll be keeping these thoughts and other questions in mind: am i, knowingly or not, using my lack of clarity about the bigger picture as a barrier to changing anything about the smaller one right in front of my face? am i stopping myself from doing important impactful work (big or small) right now because i’m trying to find the impactful work i’m “meant” to be doing? is it worth it to do nothing while in search of our specific purpose versus simply living and helping and calling that our purpose? is trying to figure out how to be the best person stopping me from being a good person?
p.s. i have to plug watching “everything everywhere all at once” here – truly a revelation of a film and one that offers up an interesting conversation between nihilism and absurdism amidst all of its other amazingness. not at all surprising that it almost instantly become my #1 favorite film of all-time. If you haven’t seen it, see it ASAP. if you have, see it again. and no matter what, tell me about it!
