I don’t know whether it’s a characteristic of our Western society, I don’t want to generalise, besides, I lack the information and knowledge to include or exclude other societies in my reflections. However, I noticed a particular phenomenon occurring around me: many people feel depressed because they consider their life is meaningless; it sometimes happens to me too. What's the point in keeping going since I'm useless and what I do has a small impact, at best; at least at the scale of the universe, it’s less true as far as my close relations are concerned. Nonetheless, they lived happily before I came along, they still will live happily after I’m gone.

So, we consider that the meaning is the exact same thing as hope, joy, and happiness (I'm happy, my life is not vain). On the contrary, the absence of meaning causes anxiety and in the worst case scenario, strong depression.

It seems to me this way of seeing things is completely wrong, and that anxiety is actually linked to the existence of meaning, and joy and happiness to the absence of meaning.

If there’s a meaning to life, in the practical sense of the word, then life can lose its meaning at any time. For instance, I bring meaning to my life by having a family, but the day this family comes to disappear for any reason (divorce, accident or anything else), my whole world collapses and my life loses its meaning. THIS is a considerable source of anxiety! We spend a really long time trying to bring meaning to our life, we are anxious at the idea of failing to do so, and then, we are anxious at the idea of losing everything, which will happen eventually.

A life without any “practical” meaning has the advantage of avoiding the anxiety of finding the meaning of life and the one of losing this meaning afterwards. A life that is not spent trying to find its meaning is more committed to the present, hence more committed to happiness.

If there is meaning to life, in the religious or scientific sense of the word, (i.e. Why does life exist? Why are we on Earth?), then only war and chaos can come from this consideration since, and History proves it, men don’t all have the same interpretation of the meaning of life, there have been numerous cults and religions confronting each other on this matter since the beginning of time. I include science among these religions as it also explains life, or at least it tries to find its origins.

If life doesn’t have any “metaphysical” meaning, if we accept that man is the fruit of randomness, an infinitely complex one, but randomness nonetheless, if we accept there’s nothing before birth, nothing after death, just the time of our life, then all these existential anxieties, which are amongst the most painful ones, disappear and all we have to do is to enjoy life and all of the possibilities for joy, happiness and encounters (human, literary, musical ones, or of any other kind) life offers.

Some of the people who believe in God, any God, claim that if there is no meaning to life, then life doesn’t have any interest anymore, and that they wouldn’t work this hard to behave properly in their everyday life. Then is a believer a good and virtuous man only by fear of God’s sanctions? It’s really sad. What do they do with common sense? Isn’t it better to help one’s neighbour than killing them? To me it’s much more pleasant to live in peace than in war, isn’t it? Besides, for the survival of the species, it is preferable to help each other than kill each other. This Darwinian viewpoint shows it’s not just in our own, selfish interest to be good with our neighbour (our life is more pleasant when more generous), but that it’s also in the interest of the human species. Unfortunately, we are destroying our planet for the joy of the instant profit, but that’s a different matter.

Between a life full of meaning and full of anxiety, and a life void of any meaning and void of any anxiety, I think the choice is really easy to make. Oddly enough, we spontaneously choose the first path. Few people actually give up on the idea that there is meaning to life. The effect of the habit of trying to explain and interpret every single thing is that our mind feels uncomfortable when facing the absence of meaning and prefers to stay on known ground, even though it means having to suffer.

The big mistake we often make is to believe that if we suppress the meaning to life, we also suppress hope, the will to live and happiness. That’s probably what scares us and forces us to take the first path. On top of that, the first path offers many different answers so everyone can find the answer their looking for; including realising there is no meaning to life.

Generally, we consider that our life is a happy one if it has meaning. These would be the two facets of life. Meaning + Happiness = Life.

I believe this equation is false.

Happiness is a state of the present. The happiness of three days ago is no longer happiness, and tomorrow’s happiness is not happiness yet. I may have been happy before, I might be happy again in the future, but true happiness is the one I enjoy in the present time. Being happy is being able to welcome the present.

Past is full of disappointments, sadness, remorse and regrets, future is mainly the source of anxiety, since we ignore what will happen to us. The only room left for happiness lies in the present, flouting the past and the future.

Meaning requires a constructed creation that starts in the past, goes on in the present and finishes in the future. In the construction of meaning, the two ends, past and future, are the most important ones. Future is actually probably the most important end here, since the final result is what matters in meaning, in creation, in construction. This makes us unavailable to the present, as we’re focused towards the future.

Contrary to what media and every strata of the society tell us, a meaningful life doesn’t necessarily equal a happy one. We all can think of examples of people whose life was meaningful and full of constructions, History books are full of these. But are these lives examples of happy lives? Do we really have examples of people who used happiness as the driving force of their life? These models are long forgotten, these lives were in the present and had in effect no place in the future.

However, even when knowing all this, it is hard to realise and live the absence of meaning in our daily lives, as we are conditioned to spend our whole life looking for one and building one.

What if, in fact, life was just life, nothing more, nothing less, inventing itself constantly at every present moment? Wouldn’t life be less heavy freed from the weight of meaning?

Fushichô

January 8, 2008