The meaning of life question, is meaningless
I want to preface the essay by stating something I heard someone say, “You can’t be convinced of a philosophy unless you are already one foot in it. “ For me, that turned out to be nihilism absurdism.
The image below depicts how I’ve felt over the years thinking about this topic.
Although arguably, I’ve spent more time on the “no meaning” side. And that has real consequences for how one lives day to day.
The conflict of whether or not to put in really hard effort, going above and beyond in things like work, relationships, life situations is very important and could even be confusing. Especially in times, when it gets really tough, and when it feels like can’t do this anymore. The question comes as an excuse, does it really matter? Now combine that with the state of the world and absolute apathy one notices, one starts to wonder.
I felt something missing in the philosophies like Stoicism, some religious philosophies I read about, some lectures I listened to. Find meaning in what you do or there is no meaning to what you do. I couldn’t agree with either. Not with the find meaning group; because I couldn’t just have faith, I need reasons, especially with receding concepts like God for example. At the same time, I couldn’t just say there is no meaning because I am experiencing life and do feel emotions in the zoomed-in sense. And that is how I came across a book by Albert Camus called “The Myth of Sisyphus”.
This book takes a radical approach and simply says, “What does it matter that there is no meaning to life?”. The question and other questions like that are just inconsequential. He says, imagine Sisyphus happy - happy in just rolling the stone up, seeing it roll down, roll it up again, see it roll down and again and again. Isn’t the process enough to be just doing it? Why find meaning in it?
The trick is in realizing that Sisyphus was condemned to rolling the rock over the hill for eternity. He didn’t choose it. There was no grand reason behind it. And yet, Camus says, imagine him happy. If even a condemned, meaningless act can be enough; then maybe the question “what is the meaning of life?” was never the right question to begin with. It’s not that there is no meaning. It’s that the question itself is meaningless.
Grug Happy!