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No amount of crazy wise dudes always hanging around the corner store can give us a satisfying answer to this seemingly important question: What is the meaning of life?
So, right now, we will attempt to answer a question that has been asked for millennia. And although many answers have been given, we still seem to ask this question in the hope of getting something that feels more right.
But what if there is no answer that is more right when it comes to asking what the meaning of life is?
The Meaning of Life No One Likes to Hear
I’m going to be blunt here. If we are completely honest with ourselves, the answer is that there is no meaning to life.
Sounds very nihilistic, I know, but that’s only when we assume that a life without meaning is not worth living. But I would say a life without meaning is worth living even more.
But before we get ahead of ourselves let’s back up a second. You might be thinking about how I have the audacity to claim that life has no meaning. Who am I to pronounce a life without meaning? Fair enough. I don’t want you to just believe what I say. You can do your own math and decide whether I’m right or whether I’m a nihilistic fool.
Before this gets too grim, we will get to a pretty cool aspect about life being meaningless later on in this piece, so you better stick around.
Anyway, life has no meaning because any amount of meaning we assign to life must come from the mind. This means that when we say the meaning of life is this or that or the other, we are essentially saying that the meaning of life is what these thoughts represent.
Our thoughts never represent the totality of life. So what we do is pick a small aspect of life, focus our thoughts on it, and then assign meaning to this aspect.
But life isn’t confined by human thought, at least not in a way that I’m aware of.
It’s like saying the meaning of the ocean is to incubate life forms. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it certainly is partial. What about fish? Or algae? Or surfing? Or cruises? Or even tsunamis?
What this means is that any meaning life might have must be beyond the mind. Every meaning we assign to life must be partial and can never represent the whole thing in its is-ness.
Even my saying life is meaningless is not really true. This brings me to the meaning of life we all like.
The Meaning of Life is Going on Walks
What I mean by that is that the meaning of life is whatever you want it to be. There is no right or wrong here. And you don’t have to find any final meaning either.
Today the meaning of life for you might be dogs because I mean who doesn’t love dogs? Tomorrow the meaning of life might be fulfilling your creative potential, which gets closer to what most of us would expect an answer to the meaning of life to be.
Whatever meaning you choose is fine. If you really crave meaning in life then you have two options:
1. Find something that quenches your thirst for meaning.
2. Start dismantling yourself and your reality until meaning no longer concerns you.
Option 1 is probably the easier one and it’s not as difficult as it seems.
Meaning doesn’t emerge from thinking about meaning but about doing what you really want to do and in doing so, your meaning will naturally emerge. Or you’ll be so fulfilled doing what you want to do that you’ll no longer care about meaning.
Either way, your itch will be scratched and everyone is happy.
I know I make this sound a little condescending and as if I’m making fun of it. But I’m doing this to lighten this topic up a bit. I know many of us are seriously in pain because of the question of meaning and purpose. I know I was for a long time.
All I’m trying to accomplish here is to get you out of your head and into life.
What if Life Had an Overall Meaning?
Ok, you got me. Let’s talk meaning, shall we? It might not be 100% true but who cares?
It’s all pretty simple. The meaning of life is living. It’s being so fully immersed in life that there is no difference between you and life, which by the way is true.
Life is living itself and you’re just in for the ride. And when you recognize this, you’ll see meaning in everything. A blade of grass. The song of a bird. A dumpster behind a fast-food chain. It’s all brimming to the max with meaning, or meaninglessness because at this point, what’s the difference?
Most of us live life as if it’s me versus my environment. But there is no me and environment. There is only environMEnt.
When we start liberating ourselves from false beliefs, and preconceived notions about what life is supposed to be like, we start seeing the intertwinement of everything. Slowly but surely, we recognize that we are an integrated part of everything, we are our environment and our environment is us, which also eradicates the idea of “us”.
There is no difference between inside and outside because in the end there is no inside and outside. Try to find something outside yourself. As soon as you do, it’s inside your awareness and thus inside.
Your world is your subjective perspective. When you ask what the meaning of life is, you’ll get all kinds of answers. But when you decide things have meaning, they do.
It’s All About You
See that it’s not the world that is creating all these questions and problems for you, it’s you. It’s always been you. Your world is about you. And I don’t mean this in a narcissistic sense but in a no-one-experiences-the-world-like-you-do sense.
You can’t even prove that there is anyone outside of you. So, I hope, that you, in your view, are the coolest most interesting person in your life. And, just in case you have doubts about it, you can do whatever you want to do, and I hope that is what you are doing.
The only thing that is keeping you from living life the way you want to is fear, which comes in the form of rationalizations and a materialistic view of existence.
In the end, the problem is not that you apparently don’t have the answer to the question of what the meaning of life is, but that you think you need artificial meaning and that it’s your job to figure it out.
But you don’t need to and you won’t.
The moment you get yourself out of the way and no longer see anything wrong with anything that’s the moment you fulfill the meaning of life. And that’s also the moment where you no longer give a single hoot about any kind of meaning.
And in case this isn’t apparent yet, whatever meaning your life might have, you’re already fulfilling right now. So take a breath, relax, and go on a walk. It’s all fine.
Luka
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Hello, my friend! Thank you for the thoughts. Here is where my mind goes, and I wonder if some of your other readers feel the same: When we find something outside ourselves and become aware of it, that awareness is then inside us. As you say. But are you saying that awareness is the same as the thing itself? For instance, here I am, sitting in the bath (it would be very nice but I am trying to soothe my aching back) and there is a towel hanging on the door. Is my perception, awareness, or idea of that towel… Read more »