I received an email copied below (Jen, please email me if you want this removed) almost a year ago and I just decided to post it. Read the email and my response follows. The major theme is that the meaning of life seems to have been a struggle of younger days and that the search for it ultimately clouds the answer.

—Beginning of email:
Your excerpt (below) from “Living Commercial” caught me~it’s good to see I’m not the only one who feels these things.

“Consumerism is driven by the illusion of happiness in products and lifestyles that are meant to take your money—money that you have traded 8+ hours of your daily life for. Perhaps it is maturing, but as I’ve evolved over the last 5 years from a college student into a working stiff I have lost some of the ambition to dissect, criticize, and discuss the world. I have spent increasing amounts of time working and sorting my finances to the point that free time is happily spent in boredom—but with anxiety. I think to myself that this can’t be right and that I should be more productive, like I should be doing something. So I begin to plan for things that are out of my control. I think that perhaps leisure used to mean something different than it does now. Perhaps people used to know how to spend free time and because their lives weren’t so fast paced as today’s they could deal with time differently. Then again, maybe it is my brain—sometimes it won’t quiet down and that’s why boredom can just as easily lead to anxiety.” …more

but more specifically “…I have lost some of the ambition to dissect, criticize, and discuss the world. I have spent increasing amounts of time working and sorting my finances to the point that free time is happily spent in boredom….” Free time spent in boredom—it’s sad but true. All my old hobbies either bore me, or I no longer have the attention span to partake in them.

Have you ever considered that the problem with the meaning in life is that we spend so much time searching for it, trying to derive it from the events, or even trying to analytically calculate what it must be that we’ve robbed it of its intrinsic worth? I used to fret over how I felt I must live my life–what I wanted it to be, who I wanted to be, and what it all should mean (what I strove for it to mean). And then, for no reason, the worry faded. Actually, the worry of meaning was ousted by financial worries, personal worries. Later, in passing an old professor of mine had said the reason he did what the did was because it was the only thing he felt gave his meager life meaning. That made sense to me. Searching for meaning is so futile because it cannot be found; meaning is “what you make of it”, but more so, you make meaning, so to speak. It’s not that the worries and anxiety aren’t there. It’s that that are irrelevant. We control what is meaningful. Meaning is what we want it to be. So we run around doing things that seem senseless, and we question “why, what’s the pay-off?” and scoff that none of it makes sense. We can’t change those things, so we shouldn’t focus on them. Meaning can’t be found in our 9-5, activity-driven lives, so we shouldn’t question the meaning of that. Meaning is everything else. Meaning is why it’s worth waking up and dealing with all the bullshit. It shouldn’t matter that you cannot pinpoint what you consider meaningful. It should only matter that you obviously find meaning in life somehow or you would’ve quit (suicide) long ago. Meaning is elusive, therefore it drives us crazy because we feel we it has to be unidentified, tangible. People like you and I are so worried about figuring it all out that we overlook the meaning/truth of things. I always felt I had to figure out life and what it’s worth. Life is not a problem, it cannot be solved. Once we accept this we can stop approaching life as a problem we must figure out and just live it.

Those are just my thoughts. I’m tired of the worry and fruitless attempts of solving something I cannot figure out. It comforts me to approach life in the manner described above opposed to my failed attempts of figuring it all out.
—End of email

—My repsonse:
The magician waves his left hand so the audience forgets to notice the right hand. So much of my analytical perspective must have been driven by discomfort. All I could see was a better place. No, it wasn’t a better place; it was an insatiable will at finding a better place. And then without even remarking at the change, like Tuesday into Wednesday, things were different. I see “Existential Tension dot com” and see a book’s worth of writing talking about what IT is all about, and I remark, “Yeah, but who has that kind of time.” But really, I have the time. I’ve always had the time. Most of us do. Really; there is so much time wasted but every single one of us is driven towards leisure and I personally love it more often than the little bug in my brain that says “There is so much more to figure out before your little blob of flesh matters no more.” I fantasize about getting a graduate degree; leaving my career path for another that I would have done correctly if I had two lives. But things are the way they are, and not to say we should go with the rising tide every day, but there is momentum that cannot be ignored. Some things don’t change and I realize that while my ambitions are still there, I am still the same person that likes to take things at my own pace, which includes procrastinating on the jobs I don’t really care for, but also focusing beyond reason on the ones I find particular interest in. No, it is not that I am lazy because I’ll put huge amounts of time and energy into things that capture something I’m interested in. To continue this stream of thought, I have found that I’m abnormally passionate about a lot of things and the larger list is toward the things I dislike. I just see so much more unmet potential in everything that it drives me insane. I blame the mediocrity of society; it’s my go-to cause of all-that-sucks.

Meaning to me these days is almost one of those things I don’t take seriously. I read all that I wrote and my opinions haven’t changed; just my attitude and perspective. It’s like being on a foothill and seeing a great forest below. Then some time later you climb to the peak of a greater mountain and see the same forest. It is the same place you knew but now you see a bit further. I mean, I guess it is like that. What can I say? I’m in a part of my life where my parents are getting older; they have grand-kids by their latest spouse’s kids. I have a career that has taken me a long way in a short period of time. I’m pondering my own fleshy clones and what it might mean to be old and childless. Suddenly meaning is not entirely what it used to be. Well, that’s not entirely true. Meaning several years ago included a path to thinking about my own family, aging, and mortality, except those things weren’t as close as they are today, or will be forever to come until I die a lazy Sunday or a fiery car crash.

I said earlier that I don’t take the idea of “meaning” seriously. Really, I’m analyzing this as I go right now, but to ask myself, “What is it all about?” doesn’t spark some chin-scratching pondering. I take the approach of the old man who seems to have seen it all (as us young whippersnappers might perceive); I give advice. I say,

“You see, life is merely what you are doing at the moment. For a time, you look toward the future because you don’t have a past but know enough to realize the grand scale of things to come and how many infinite paths you have to choose from. Of course! It is extremely overwhelming! Not only that, you are discovering who you really are by struggling with your desires and will for integrity, not to mention independence. But even pointing this out does not solve the pressure you feel in your soul. Only struggling though this period will give you perspective later. It is a rite of passage; no use looking for the easy way out. But then, before you know it, you are actually already out. And as it turns out, life’s meaning leaves the realm of the future ends enters the realm of the near-future, and even some times the present.”

Now I can only speculate on the rest of such an old man’s gospel, but I’d imagine that it would continue…

“And for the wise-before-their-time, those who see the meaning in the present will be happier people. So you live a good portion of your life living for now and the next couple years; vacations, home renovations, braces for the kids, a little cash here and there for retirement, birthday parties, holidays, visiting the folks. But then you get old and life changes again. Now meaning seems to have left you. Meaning passed you up in your mid-life and now you look to share what you’ve learned. You see the end is closer than the beginning and every new day is one more for the books. A lot of things suck; they suck real bad. But a great many more are brilliant. No longer bogged down by the hassle of living for tomorrow, you live for today, and the next day you can see your family.”

So to me, really, right now, I see meaning in the things I like. I don’t mean porn, but I won’t ignore the fact that there is room for understanding even such a contradictory notion of meaning in the visceral pleasures of naked women; perhaps largely a male thing. Let me modify that idea. Meaning is in the things I am passionate about. This way I include passion for the things I like AND dislike. We can’t ignore the passion that ignites a will toward change. This idea seem obvious when we consider the text-book figures of great movements. I have to ask, then, what is the meaning of my life right now.

My gut reaction is, “What do you mean?” I don’t actually see meaning but I know what is meaningful TO my life. I love my girlfriend; I really love her. She’s like no other person I ever thought existed. It is in a way that I can’t quite understand yet. I mean, it feels more mature than anything I’ve ever known but yet foreign, like there is more to learn about her. I’ve been in love but this is different. I can’t place it. But it is this mystery that really fuels the meaning to it. I find so much more importance to the things that bring me joy and I don’t know why. This throws back to what you said below: “we’ve robbed [the meaning of life] of its intrinsic worth” by searching for it. It sounds so very Quantum-Physics; Uncertainty Principle. But really, you have hit it so exactly right in the rest of that paragraph. All the meaning you will ever find in life is worth as much as you allow yourself to live it, without dissecting and quantifying it. And fortunately for us, there is never going to be an answer that such an approach will find. At least that will be true if the pursuit is honest and intelligent. I could easily see the same struggle resulting in a false conclusion, e.g. Christianity. So ultimately, the struggle for solving the unsolvable riddle leads to the solution of understanding how the riddle works, and in the end, the solace of wisdom.