Illusions Of Meaning - Ignoring The Bigger Picture

When someone says that life has no meaning, don’t they really mean that they don't see or feel any meaning? But isn't the problem that even if they do see or feel meaning, they could be deceiving themselves, and also that this feeling might be temporary? Deceiving themselves in the sense that "there is meaning" means more than "it seems to me that there is meaning." Because this subjective feeling, no matter how abstractly we try to view it, remains subjective.

If a person is intelligent enough, let’s say, no matter what they feel, they can always keep in mind that they might be suffering from delusion, an illusion, that their sense of meaning could be shifted away from what is commonly accepted as meaningful, or even from their own sense of what is meaningful. But what happens if they are submerged only in their own sensations and can't take a step back, can’t realize that a wave does not mean an ocean, a ray of light does not mean the sun, and so on, but simply live for what they see?

If we had no vulnerabilities, we wouldn't have anything. The problem isn't exactly that some people lose their sense of meaning to destructive extremes, but perhaps more that we don't have an effective enough mechanism to protect ourselves from the disasters that arise in such cases. Just like we still can't make ourselves immune to natural disasters, for example.

The question is whether we will ever manage to handle the unforeseen well enough. For now, it's enough - we're still here, but in the long run... Someone might say that meaning doesn't depend on the outcome because our actions, for instance, precede it and don't follow it, and they deserve to have value in themselves. Too much or too little attachment to explanations of reality can bring or take away a sense of meaning; too much or too little participation in events, too. And yet, how do we measure what's too much or too little? How do we know what's right or wrong?

Principles exist just enough so we don't overanalyze our views and stop living. Interesting events and pleasant experiences, as well as attempts from time to time to become aware of our surroundings, might be the closest thing to meaning, but they don't overlap with it entirely because they are still our experiences. And we might have made the wrong choice, right?

Maybe we need to take care that our sense of meaning is flexible enough not to break from unexpected events or questions that arise, and yet we need to test it enough to be sure it isn't just something made up by us. The thoughts we have in our heads are connected to reality, no matter how disconnected we might feel from it at times or how unsure we are of what reality actually is...

Let’s celebrate both meaning and meaninglessness.