Wrestling with Meaning: Philosophical Questions with No Easy Answers

If you knew, for a fact, that your life had no grand, cosmic purpose, would you still get out of bed tomorrow morning? That’s the entire game, isn't it? It’s the question hiding right behind our whole conversation last week about free will. Exactly. Because if we really are free—truly, radically free—then we’re not just choosing what to have for breakfast. We’re choosing why we bother to have breakfast at all. And that is terrifying. Or it’s liberating. It depends on the day, I think. For centuries, the answer was simple. Your purpose was given to you.

By God, by the gods, by the cosmos. You were a character in a story that was already written. And that’s… comfortable. It’s a relief, in a way. To think there's a script. You just have to play your part well. You just have to play your part. But what happens when you look up and realize there’s no director? No audience? That’s the modern condition. That’s the shadow of philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre looming over us. So we’re left with two, maybe three, paths. One is to just borrow a pre-made meaning. Religion, nationalism, even a corporate mission...

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. A borrowed framework can still give a life shape and direction. The problem is when the framework cracks. When the institution fails you, or the ideology is revealed to be hollow. Then the crisis is twice as deep. Because you didn't just lose a belief, you lost your entire reason for being. You lost your self. So what's the alternative? Some people try to find an inherent meaning. Not from a divine source, but from something inside us. Love, connection, creating art, seeking knowledge.

The things that feel universally human. The things that endure. But... is that enough? Does saying "the meaning of life is to love my family" really answer the cosmic scale of the question? It feels... small. And that smallness is what leads to the third path. The existentialist path. The one that Albert Camus walked. He looked at the universe's cold indifference and our burning desire for meaning and called it The Absurd. The Absurd. Right. And his answer was what? To just... give up? No! That's the beautiful turn. His answer was to rebel.

To see the absence of prescribed meaning not as a void, but as a canvas. We are, in Sartre's famous words, "condemned to be free." Condemned. What a word for it. It sounds like a prison sentence. It is. And it’s also the key to the kingdom. If nothing has inherent meaning, then you are free to give meaning to whatever you choose. Your suffering can have meaning. Your joy can have meaning. The simple act of pushing a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, can be an act of defiant purpose. So you're saying the meaning of life is...

whatever we decide it is? That feels like a cheat code. It feels too easy and impossibly hard at the same time. It is impossibly hard. Because it means you are one hundred percent responsible. There's no one to blame and no one to thank but yourself. Every day, you wake up and you create the meaning of your own life from scratch. It’s an exhausting and glorious burden. So we're back where we started. Would I get out of bed? I think… I think the struggle you’re describing, that’s the reason. The act of asking the question is itself a kind of meaning.

The search is the destination. Maybe we never find a definitive answer. Maybe the whole point is to keep looking, and in doing so, to live more deeply. To pay closer attention. And to choose. To consciously choose what matters, even for a day, even for an hour. Maybe the question isn't 'what is the meaning of life?' But what? But 'what meaning will I have the courage to create today?'