Meaning of Meaninglessness

In his classical essay on meaning of life, The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus cracks a joke. A madman is sitting beside a bathtub holding a fishing rod. The hook is in the bathtub. Seeing this, his psychiatrist asks him, “Hey chap, are they biting?” The madman answers, “No, you fool, this is only a bathtub.”

We are not unlike that mad man in our search for the meaning of life. We know that there’s nothing to fish for when it comes to meaning in life. Yet we need meaning. Without it, life will be quite unbearable. Emptiness is what you feel unless you discover a meaning for your life. As we saw in the first part of this series, meaning is something we create rather than discover.

Was the madman creating his meaning by sitting with a fishing rod knowing that he was not going to get any fish? Well, Camus argued that life was as absurd as that. His contemporary, Jean-Paul Sartre experienced the nausea of the meaningless human existence and went on to tell us why we need to create a meaning. We are condemned to that freedom, Sartre said, the freedom to choose our destiny.

Most people go through life without committing themselves to responsible choices. They would rather accept given truths and meanings; those given by religions, for example. [This series already discussed the role of religion in giving meaning to life.] Samuel Beckett illustrated the life of such people in a short play which went on to acquire classical status in literature: Waiting for Godot.

Two men are waiting on a roadside for someone called Godot. They go through a series of repetitive actions throughout the play, actions which are obviously absurd. Even when they are told in no uncertain terms that Godot was not going to come that day, they continue to wait. They continue to wait after telling each other that they should leave.

Such is life for most people: a series of repetitive actions, a circle that goes on and on. It consists of certain regular actions like taking children to school, going to office, doing the same job day after day, bringing children back home, watching the TV, fiddling with the mobile phone, and so on. It goes on forever. When children grow up, the routine will change a bit; it will be replaced with a new ritual, another circular motion. Similarly, new rituals will replace older ones and the cyclical motion continues to our grave. Absurd!

The Existentialist thinkers like Sartre tell us that we need to forge a meaning into that meaningless absurdity called life. How do we do it?

First of all, we need to work on our self-awareness. The greater our awareness, the more our possibilities for freedom and choices. We can live better, fuller lives if we accept certain facts like:

·        We are finite and do not have unlimited time to do what we want in life.

·        We have the potential to take action or not to act; inaction is a decision.

·        We choose our actions, and therefore we partially create our own destiny.

·        The meaning of our life is created in the process of making our choices.

·        We are basically alone, yet we have opportunities to relate to other beings.

·        Society is a choice, and it inevitably corrupts you.

·        Loneliness is a choice, and it inevitably destroys you.

·        You need to grapple with the inevitable ironies of life.

Secondly, we need to accept personal responsibility for our life. Refusal to accept responsibility, by shifting it to other people through facile excuses like ‘I’m this way because I grew up in a dysfunctional family’, leads to inauthentic existence. We are free to do what we want with our lives. Freedom is responsibility. We are responsible, no one else, for our actions as well as our failures to act. Our choices may sometimes be wrong. Never mind, make new choices. That’s all we have: choices.

Thirdly, have the courage to be what you are. You are unique. There is no one else like you on this earth, there never was, and never will be. You are the only one of your kind. You are precious just for that one reason alone. Nurture your uniqueness. Your uniqueness can make great contributions to others. Even the flicker of a candle makes a huge difference in the mounting darkness. The truth is that your struggle to discover, to create, and to maintain the deep core within your being is going to make much more significant contributions than candle flickers. Every authentic individual is a radiant soul, a fountainhead of wisdom.

A whole new meaning is the final result of your enterprise. Many old values will be discarded in the process and new ones will be added. For example, you may decide that helping your neighbour with his broken fence is more valuable than going to church on Sunday morning. That’s just an example. Life offers you infinite choices.

And remember that meaning is not discovered once and for all. Meaning is as flighty as the cloud in the sky. You need to rediscover it day after day, perhaps. You need to forge new meanings in new environments. That is life: a great adventure, a great creation, a great joy. If you choose!

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This post is the 6^th in a series on Meaning of Life.

The 1^st was: What is the meaning of life?

2^nd: Religion and Meaning

3^rd: Career and Meaning

4^th: Science and Meaning

5^th: Literature and Meaning

7^th  will be Meaning of Suffering

In case some of this has aroused your interest to get to know me better, here’s my memoir: Autumn Shadows, available at Amazon.