What It Means To Me
If Life loses its meaning,
Give meaning to Life.
From time to time, something happens to us that makes us question whether there is any meaning in our lives at all. Sometimes it is a sense of injustice that causes it, the premature death of someone close to us, or something bad happening to a good person. Sometimes we just wake up one day and wonder what is going on - things are the same, and yet now they are boring and routine and pointless, whereas before they felt good and wonderful.
What are our choices when this happens? We can seek out meaning, trying new things, hoping that they will bring back Life’s meaning. Or we can ride it out, continue our life even without the meaning, trusting or hoping that the meaning will return.
In either case, we treat this meaning as if it is something lost from the outside, as though something outside of us has taken it away. This is not clear seeing. It is up to us to bring meaning to Life through our actions and intentions. Where else could it come from? Meaning cannot be taken, it can only be given.
April 9th, 2006 at 10:06 am
A true reminder bud, it’s so tempting to think of “Unseen forces” which are “Out there” working against us. After all, all good things stem from us, and all bad things happen to us, don’t they?
It happens to everyone once in a while that there seem to be “lost” moments, or even days.
I’ve been considering an alternative view that I’ve discovered through Confucius, and a recent book I read by Marcel Möring: That there is, in fact, no meaning. There’s no point, no goal and no sense to things. All there is, is just to be there.
It’s liberating in a way, sort of like Instinct, you know? Stepping outside of the Game.
April 9th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Absolutely bud! I think so often the Game we play is one long search. The search for meaning, for purpose, for happiness, for enlightenment. It drives us on, it is a deep desire. To see there’s nothing to strive for is liberating, and yet paradoxically such a perception comes from striving for that perception! We chase after enlightenment, we desire it, even as we are told to let go of all desires. The questions we need to ask, and perhaps the ones we ignore by going on the search itself, is: if there’s no meaning, why live at all? Why not just give up and die?
But I think that very question shows faulty perception. It can be akin to the idea of doing the right thing, or being kind. You might ask, “if there’s no God who will punish me for being bad or reward me for being good, why not just be bad, why be good at all?” And again, that question really misses the point. It is putting things outside of us again, “Out there”, as you called it. And so we’ve come full circle once more…