When we were young the world was so colorful and interesting. Life was so full of possibility - and we hadn’t yet realized our limitations. Then we grow up. We change. The world seems dull and drab as our senses become less receptive. Our minds are burdened with adulthood. Responsibility. Our youthful hallucinations are met with the facts of life.
I once thought that life had meaning. That feeling was strong but ill-defined. I don’t quite know how that idea got into my young skull, but I think that most of the people around me carried it in their heads as well. How it got there doesn’t matter, but it’s effect does. Being told that life has cosmic meaning (or grand purpose, or however you want to phrase it) created a weird expectation in my psyche.
It’s sort of like being told that you’re going to amount to great things, but not what those great things are. At every turn you’re asking, is this it? Is this the great thing I was meant to achieve? But life is made of small moments, and you end up dismissing them because they’re not linked to your “grand purpose”.
It’s also like being told that soul mates exist. Every new person you meet has you asking “Is this The One?” instead of enjoying the moment and making new friends. The weight of your expectation is too much for any normal person to bear. And one day they’ll make a mistake and fall off your pedestal. And you might let go of them through no fault of their own.
Cosmic meaning has fallen off it’s pedestal. It’s definition has snapped sharply into focus - there is none. I realized this a few years ago, but it’s only hitting me now. I need time to grieve. To rebuild my internal world without this concept. I need to learn how to create my own meaning.
Is this what invokes a midlife crisis? You hit a certain age and realize the rest of your life is going to be more of the same unless you do something about it. Motorbikes, affairs, divorce, workaholism, hobbies, anything to cope with the disappointment when you realize your life isn’t going to amount to what you thought it was.
Life is about eating, sleeping, reproducing, avoiding exposure and disease, making your surroundings a little nicer, mastering a skill, spending time with people. Meaning is functional, internal, localized. Perhaps other species also chase a sense of meaning beyond these things, but if humans were to go extinct then so would this human idea of meaning. It doesn’t exist without us or outside of us.
Religion may say otherwise, but it simply defers meaning beyond the veil of death. If anything it seems to me an admission that this current life does not have ultimate meaning and purpose. Our altars and temples, rituals and myths, are all built in service of keeping the cosmic nihilism at bay.
