Life is Meaningless, and Why That’s Good News
If you’re the type of person who struggles to see any meaning in life, congratulations! Writing to you as someone who can deeply relate, I can affirm that you are on the right path because the first step toward finding true meaning within is accepting that everything this world has to offer will ultimately leave us empty. The truth is, life is meaningless, but don’t take my word for it. The writer of Ecclesiastes (King Solomon, son of King David), who is among the wisest and richest men who ever lived and satisfied his every desire, concluded that the only thing that brings lasting fulfillment is to take pride in a hard day’s work and to eat, drink, and be merry. Not only can I empathize with the lack of meaning you may feel, I may be able to move you one step closer to finding purpose that does matter and can help you live as God intended you to.
My own purposelessness hit hard when I graduated from college. Up to that point, I was able to find enough meaning by applying myself to school work. But when I transitioned into being confined full-time by a gray cubicle surrounded by corporate drones motivated by the next paycheck or company bonus, I didn’t see the point anymore. My truest self, the unadulterated five-year-old within, wondered almost subconsciously why I had traded the freedom and idealism of youth for being sentenced to a bleak 45-year trek toward retirement. I had so many questions about what was deep and true and enduring in this life, and the only answer the world gave me? Money. Money to afford to live. Money to buy useless crap that never satisfies the soul’s real longings. Money to impress people I don’t even know.
That job didn’t last long. The company let me go after a long hospitalization for my first of many bipolar manias that was triggered by a spiritual crisis of needing meaning and purpose. And bipolar disorder did give me those things by showing me that life is a heroic journey for each of us. The same patterns that play out in the epic quests of our favorite stories and films are available to each of us if only we would see ourselves as heroes. The beauty of living as heroes is that we can choose to initiate ourselves into our own epic quests, a mindset that elevates the mundane to the exciting. Try to focus only on the quest of today and the enemies and allies it throws your way as you conquer the dark forces. Then do it again tomorrow. The aggregate of living for the day will be a longer story or quest unfolding in your life that is not yours to know until you look back some time later.
The goal of your individual quest is yours to define. For example, if you, like me, find money a meaningless pursuit, your daily quest can be to shine a light in the lives of others. Only you know your desires, and by paying attention to those desires that God has planted in your heart for a reason, you can discover your gifts by asking yourself how best you are equipped to make those desires a reality. With time you will learn how to apply those gifts most effectively. Whatever your actual job title, your real work is putting your gifts into action, which is the driving purpose behind your heroic quest, and, as you take pride in working hard to live out your personal gifts on this present day, let that be enough. I can’t stress this enough: living for today is all we have, and that’s a lesson I did not grasp until around the age of 40. I know it sounds cliché to say, “take life one day at a time,” but hopefully I am giving you practical advice on how to do so. Remember that Jesus tells us to not be anxious about tomorrow, and when combining that imperative with the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, you can live with genuine purpose right now, the time when it matters most.
Photo Credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Existentialism/comments/18pv1in/life_is_meaningless_and_finding_meaning_is/