Ask Lemmy

Meaning is whatever you want it to be. You have the free will to create your own meaning in your life.

That being said, reading your post, I mean no disrespect, but please seek professional help. This goes beyond "finding your own meaning" and dives into "something is wrong".

And can we not consider that each of us can so arrange his own particular life so as to make it meaningful to himself and to those he influences? And in that case does not all of life and all the Universe come to have meaning to him?

Surely it is those who find their own lives essentially meaningless who most strive to impose meaning on the Universe as a way of making up for the personal lack.

--Isaac Asimov, Knock Plastic!, 1989

I see a lot of responses mentioning optimistic /absurdistic nihilism, so I'd like to share the egg.

Fun fact: the author also wrote "The Martian"

I really like that poem "Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The point of it is: no matter what kind of outsized impact you have on the world when you're alive, eventually no trace of you will remain, and everything you ever were and everything you've ever done will be forgotten.

It's a heavy, depressing message, but I find it to be oddly freeing. If nothing you do will matter in the very long run, then you're free to do whatever you want. Maybe you decide that you don't care about the people 25,000 years from now and focus instead on the people in your life right now. Maybe you make it your goal to make their lives better.

You could succumb to depression and fall into a pit of despair and heavy drug use... but if nothing matters, why not spend your time making other people's lives better instead? It feels good to make other people feel good.

I think the problem is, is people trying to bring meaning to life in general while ignoring what purpose they could bring in their life. Every single life that's been lived, has been tunneled through the eyes of just one life, per person. Some people's scope via influence, has brought purpose and meaning to the lives of others. Other times, it comes down to what you do with yourself, that brings its own meaning.

And people are leaning on all sorts of things to bring some sort of meaning to their life. Religion is a large part, because everyone fears as to where they'll go after death, they don't truly know where they're going or whether there is even an afterlife, so why not believe in a God or another deity that has all these versions of hells and heavens? It brings a level of comfort knowing that there is some purpose.

But still, I think people just miss the mark on finding purpose in the general sense of life, than focusing on finding their own purpose by making it as they go.

I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.

Why does life in and of itself need to have meaning (beyond the obvious “survival”? Why can’t you, with your abilities of thinking and reason, assign your own meaning to it?

Subjects grant meanings, objects are assigned meaning. I create meaning for myself because I am a thinking agent, setting goals and tasks for myself to accomplish based on my own values and decisions. Just because an event ends doesn't undermine it's importance or meaning while it's occurring.

And even if there could be some object or set of circumstances that assigns meaning, being assigned some universal or objective meaning would be oppressive, undermining my own subjective meanings to be replaced with some forced or necessary objective. Just because some of us have an intuitive desire to be assigned an objective meaning due to a desire for our lives to follow a narrative structure with closure like fiction doesn't mean otherwise there is no meaning. If anything the meaning is more important if it comes from you and isn't assigned to you.

"Here's squire Jöns. He grins at Death, scoff at the Lord, laughs at himself, and leers at the girls. His world exists only for himself. Absurd to all, even to himself. Meaningless to heaven, and of no interest to hell."

I think the key is to find something you are passionate about. You can think about the meaning of life all you want, but in the mean time, that little life time we have will pass by. And I think is the key is in connecting and caring about people. That's one of the quite few thing you can excel in. No other person in the planet can fill the position you are in with your family and friends. :)

You can make your own meaning, an act that is also inherently meaningless but often satisfying, or you can just relax and enjoy the things that are enjoyable.

I used to try and explain it in more detail, but I've failed to get the point across often enough that I wonder if it really can be explained. I think people just have to sit down and think about it until it snaps into focus for them.

To some degree, what is important, enjoyable, and satisfying to each of us is determined by something immutable, but if we apply ourselves many of us can examine, reason, and then understand things to a degree that we have broad control over what we let matter to us.

Focusing on what we choose to let matter to us is key to living without meaning. But we must also embrace the other parts of life, because without them, the things we believe matter most would lose their meaning.

Without the contrast of suffering, we would struggle to understand joy. I think that's the hardest thing to accept for most.

[Youtube] Unsolicited advice: How to live in a meaningless world (Absurdism explained/Albert Camus)

Because everyone else is talking about Nihilism and life, I figured I would counter with Radical Hope

you create meaning in your own life

Optimistic nihilism is the way to go. We make our own meaning.

There is meaning in life. It's what you make it. The meaning of life is to give life meaning.

Sounds like you're in the Pessimistic Nihilist stage, you just need to process things and then progress yourself to either Absurdist Nihilist or Optimistic Nihilist

It is a blessing that life has no meaning. You can give it any meaning you want without having to delude yourself from the "right" meaning.

Your life meaning could be charity, attempting to reach the pinnacle of your hobby, teaching and empowering others, success, dismantling tyrrany, competition (like that in sports and other hobbies), creation and building, etc. Find one that you believe in, and help others to find theirs

You can choose multiple, but many is too great of a burden to carry.

I aspire to live to see a future much more futuristic than science could have predicted

Instead of making a post about it. I suggest you seek professional help.

I'm glad there isn't a meaning to life. If there was a meaning, then I'd have to be doing that thing or be failing at existence. If no act matters, then I'm equally valid for doing my goofy nonsense as I am working hard or whatever.

what you are describing is the economic situation.

on the free market, the thing that is profitable is always the thing that there should be more of (according to market pressures). this is universally true across all branches of economy. if you open up a company that sells shoes, and nobody else has any shoes, then you can sell your product at a high profit margin. but if there are already 2 million shoes for 1 million people, then you will have a difficult time selling yours as well, so it's not profitable for you at all.

the same happens with the "beautiful woman" example that you cited. the reason why you think that you have to be with her now, urgently, is because there is too few of them. so there should be more of them, and that's why it's profitable to strive to be with them, if you get what i mean. in a certain sense, by doing so, you are in fact helping to make sure that there will be more like her in the future, because by striving to be with her, you are increasing the average number of children that she is going to have.

so, you can look at things through the free market perspective, which is largely equivalent to yours, but has the added benefit that there are a lot of clever people having developed very useful tools to analyze it in the past.

i decided to live vicariously through trump and act like i’m winning all the time regardless of reality, like my white trash brethren

life is fun

My life has meaning. It has meaning for no other reason than I say it does, and no one gets to decide that for me. I do not purport to speak for your life, or the lives of those I care about, or my cat’s life, or my neighbors, the birds, trees, grass, germs, or any other living thing. I do not assign meaning to society, civilizations large or small, or things that have been built to benefit me. I can only speak for my life. And I say that my life has meaning. Nothing that has happened to me, nothing that has been said, done, built or destroyed, can take that meaning away from my life without my permission.

A life has no meaning in the same way that a blank piece of paper has no meaning. I give that piece of paper meaning by writing, sketching, coloring, folding, tearing…and perhaps ultimately destroying. Now that piece of paper has a unique history imprinted on it. It can be shared, displayed, hidden, or thrown away. But the whole reason I did anything to the paper at all was because it was meaningful in the moment for me to do so.

I've never even quite understood what it is that people are thinking about when they refer to "the meaning of life." I mean - I know the definition - I know what the phrase is intended to communicate. I just don't get what it is that people actually expect.

I don't think I ever even considered the idea of life having some sort of intrinsic meaning until I was old enough to start getting into philosophy and discovered that not only do people believe that life has some intrinsic meaning, but that it's such a common belief that there's a sort of reflexive negative view of anyone who doesn't share that belief.

In spite of that, I saw and still see no reason to believe that life has intrinsic meaning (either empirically, logically or even psychologically) and more than enough reason to believe that it does not.

Now none of that's to say that my life is meaningless. It's stuffed full of meaning. It's just that all of that meaning is things I've found and adopted - none of it's intrinsic, nor does it need to be.

And I still don't really understand why anyone believes that it does need to be intrinsic. How is all of the meaning they're free to find and adopt not enough?

For whatever any of that's worth...

Is that chess scene from The Seventh Seal? Always enjoyed seeing that clip pop up.

In terms of finding meaning; try out as many hobbies and practical skills as you can. When you find one that makes you lose track of time, run with it.

Make it your goal to improve that skill as far as you can, and allow that to provide you a meaning to the regular day to day life.

Invent your own meaning. Don't listen to people who assert you should live life a certain way to fit their meaning.

I don't have a profound answer, and other commenters have covered my thoughts pretty well. I will share a small lesson I learned from my mom as a kid. First time wearing a new shirt, I jumped off the swing on our playset, and the hook at the end of the chain tore a big hole in my shirt. Naturally, I was upset and started crying. My mom told me, "You can either cry or you can laugh, but it doesn't change what happened." I've taken that to heart over the years and generally try to find the humor in everyday situations. Meaning of life? Nope. Just making life more entertaining.

Step 1: find your gifts

Step 2: share them with the world

Might I also suggest DMT

The thing that shook me out of the existential crisis of understanding nihilism is that life had as much meaning before I was born as it will after my death.

Or in other words: we are the universe exploring itself - in playful exploration and/or aesthetic creation.

To me that gives license to do something interesting with the short time, resources and attention that I have available. I find experiencing new things or in new combinations fulfilling, as do I to help others make a positive contribution to the human experience (be it through positive societal change or practicing kindness).

I stopped asking myself what the meaning of life is, and started asking what I want my impact on this earth to be.

I keep coming to the same answer. I want to live a quiet comfortable life with the people I love, and when I die, I want my only legacy on this earth to be memories.

Currently falling way short of that last goal. I make a lot of trash, currently have a conventional house with a lawn, which takes ridiculous resources to maintain. Ultimately, I'd like to build an earthship that can provide food, water, and comfort for me and my wife for the rest of our lives. I want to own things that care for me, instead of being owned by things I need to care for.

There’s a song about this, at the end of Life of Brian.

WDYM? The meaning of life is to cuddle dogs. 🤷‍♂️

I’m an absurdist so I just hope the punchline is good

The same way you do, I would imagine, by occupying our mind with stuff that keeps us from thinking about it too much.