An essay on the Meaning of Life.
Humans are Meaning Machines
We desire meaning in our lives. We are ‘meaning’ machines. We interpret every event and action to understand the ‘Why’ behind it.
Without meaning, we struggle to make sense of our lives and the world.
Haruki Murakami says:
I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.
Is there a Meaning to Life?
Consider our situation.
Our entire life and world with seven billion people is based on an insignificant ball of rock going around in circles around an insignificant star that is situated on the outskirts of an insignificant galaxy. This galaxy is part of a local galactic group that in turn is part of a super-cluster of galaxies, that in turn belongs to a local supercluster, that in turn is just a teeny-tiny pixel in the ‘observable universe’.
There is much we don’t know or see. What we don’t know or see is not in the picture below.
(Click on the picture and zoom to locate where we are in the observable universe.)
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I believe that the deep human desire for meaning arises from our need to feel significant in a universe whose origins, purpose and vastness defy human comprehension. An universe that just ‘is’, with no ‘why’ to its existence.
One hopes that philosophers have found an answer to the Meaning of Life but the only thing they have found is that there is no meaning.
There is no meaning. There is no meaning of life.
Jed McKenna, Spiritual Enlightenment
Nietzsche believed in ‘eternal recurrence’, that life repeats itself infinitely. Thus giving life ‘weight’, or meaning to our actions and decisions.
But our daily experience suggests ‘each of us has one very short life to live and that life occurs only once and never again’ – and hence The Unbearable Lightness of Being that Milan Kundera wrote about in his famous book. Lightness refers to the absence of meaning.
There are no definite and objective answers to the meaning of life in philosophy.
Or Literature for that matter.
Patrick Sumner, a surgeon and the protagonist of Ian McGuire’s dark whaling yarn, The North Water, finds himself questioned in a situation where he is the lone survivor of an ill-fated whaling expedition:
‘If you can’t save him, then why are you here?’ she asks.
‘What are you for?’
‘Everyone died except for you. Why did you live?’
We ask ‘Why?’, we ask for the meaning behind the events in this world.
Patrick Sumner’s response:
‘I’m here by accident. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘There is no why.’
Sometimes we need to know what things don’t mean – that sometimes there is no meaning.
If life is fundamentally meaningless, then the only meaning is the one we create.
Meaning of Life is Created
Viktor Frankl, a psychologist and holocaust survivor, saw three possible sources for meaning outlined in his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning.
- In work (doing something significant),
- In love (caring for another person, as Frankl held on to the image of his wife through the darkest days in Auschwitz), and
- In courage in difficult times.
You need to identify sources of the meaning of your life. It’s your task alone. No one can do it for you.
Viktor says:
Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives.
This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.
Pablo Picasso says:
The meaning of life is to find your gift.
The purpose of life is to give it away.
So we need to create meaning of our lives. But that’s still vague and doesn’t really give a ‘how’?
How to Create Meaning in Life?
If we try discern the meaning of life based on the Earth-in-the-Universe above picture, we will fail because the Earth and the Universe are not in your or my control.
If we try to find the meaning of pandemic and its impact on us, we will struggle because it isn’t something we can individually influence. We are mostly at the receiving end of the pandemic.
However we can influence our actions and response to any given situation.
Hence I believe:
Life has Meaning only When You Focus on Things in Your Control.
So wear the masks, follow social distancing, create an happy home, teach our children, eat healthy food and exercise and so on. Each purposeful action is a source of meaning.
All other times life is meaningless. And at those times it is meaningless to spend our time on this ball of rock trying to discern the meaning of life.
A closing thought from my favourite sci-fi author, Iain M. Banks, that may (or may not) comfort you.
Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning.
Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present.
It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M.
Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.
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