Sometimes I meet people who seem to have become stuck in the ultimate question about the meaning of life—no longer seeing the point of trying to make life better. Lack of meaning leads to lack of motivation for changing anything at all. This in turn confirms life as only routine, depression and suffering.
“If it’s all going black when I die—what’s the point?”
I usually respond with something like “If it’s all going to be black—what do you want out of what happens before?”
But we can’t jump directly from meaninglessness to solutions.
Everything can seem so utterly meaningless that it crushes our dreams and erases all the energy we had to continue trying to live a good life.
Someone who is hindered by meaninglessness has always thought a lot about meaning. It’s important to have one’s thoughts and feelings addressed in existential conversations. Through conversation, experiences are mirrored and validated, experiences which are actually meaningful—in the sense that they shape the person’s entire life.
Gently leading the conversation deeper into meaninglessness, into the abyss of fear and despair, the mind seeking answers eventually settles, bottoms out, to finally emerge in the freedom waiting at the bottom of the abyss. The freedom to wholeheartedly devote ourselves to what we want our life to be.
When we start taking responsibility for creating our own meaning by trying, just trying, to realize our ideals, we unlock our inner strength. We see the positive side of negativity and anxiety that we were so afraid of at the beginning of our journey. Fear and anxiety were actually impulses that made us aware that we were not living up to our best idea of how our life should be.
It may sound harsh, but life does not wait for anyone. Everyone who has lost someone they loved knows this. Life just continues.
We say “after rain comes sunshine”.
In my experience, the sun comes out faster when we allow ourselves to get really wet.
