What To Do When The Life Feels Meaningless

The Elusive Truth

If you feel like your life is totally meaningless, you are perfectly normal. How would you respond if someone asks you, “hey, why did you create the universe this way”? Well, I don’t know. And don’t ask me because I’m not the one who made the universe.

 

It’s the same for the question, “what is the meaning of my life?”. There’s no meaning from the start because you didn’t create yourself. You were born to the world, not the other way around. In essence, getting obsessed with the meaning of life is like putting 0 into the denominator of a fraction and trying hard to solve a mathematics problem. It just won’t work.

 

Sometimes, people who make a mistake of asking such a question to themselves reach a wrong conclusion that their life is meaningless and resort to extreme means aimed at mitigating their existential crisis. Such tragedy occurs because they asked themselves a question that doesn’t make any sense in the first place.

 

So What?

So you should create the meaning yourself. Pursue your passion, meet with people you like and eat things you like. Get some exercise to stay in good health. Always be thankful to everything that you are currently enjoying.

 

Even though often designated as the major source of stress and illnesses, pursuit of good academic achievements or career achievements is beneficial for life. What turns it into a health destroyer is the erroneous mindset that people often hold when trying to deal with such goals.

 

If you are pursuing success only because you want to meet the standards suggested by the society, you’re sacrificing yourself to do something that’s good only for the society. While it is good to contribute to the society, top priority should always be to take good care of yourself.

 

There are two reasons why anyone may suffer from existential crisis. The first is, as mentioned above, the habit of throwing nonsensical question to self. The second reason is the failure to see the true nature of life. That is, we sometimes fail to see that all events in life eventually pass.

 

When we prepare for an exam, it feels like the life will end if we fail the exam. However, that’s not the case, at least most of the times. It’s just that the importance of exam temporarily appeared in its magnified form because we were temporarily obsessed with doing it well. Once the exam is over, we are no longer so attached to it.

 

Therefore, it is very important to refresh your consciousness from time to time, just like how you would regularly empty garbage cans at home. We should always reserve some time to dispose of old, now unnecessary goals and replace them with new interesting goals.

 

In essence, it is okay to fail an exam. It is okay to get sacked. It is okay to suffer existential crisis and it is okay to get sick sometimes. The key is to recognize that all the phenomena are ephemeral.

 

Conclusion

By embracing the fact that our lives are meaningless from the start, we can become individuals who can actively create meaning in life. Life is not a predetermined journey. It is a journey to be constructed.