Longing for Meaning in a Temporary World
What is the meaning of life? Ask a dozen people and you may get a dozen different answers. Ask Google and you’ll get more than two dozen pages of answers. This is perhaps the most significant question one could ask, the question which informs how we spend our brief time on earth. It is the question which guides all other questions, and yet the answers offered by some of the brightest minds the world has ever known leave much to be desired.
Insights into the meaning of life vary from achieving your goals to appreciating beauty, from caring for others to overcoming challenges. Some say the meaning of life is life itself (sounds deep, but what?), while others advise us to stop asking the question, to keep moving so we aren’t burdened by such concerns, or to create our own meaning.
While most people recognize that any ultimate meaning must come from outside of ourselves – from beyond the opinions and preferences of individual humans – many prefer contrived, fairytale meanings that allow them to maintain their illusion of autonomy. In speaking of his fear of religion itself, philosopher Thomas Nagel famously wrote, “I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
Among the more humorous propositions, Dr. Neel Burton of Psychology Today rejects the existence of God, but surmises that if God does exist, then His likely purpose for humans, as well as for all of nature, is to serve as “super-efficient heat dissipators” (yes, seriously!), a purpose which he contends would be worse than having no purpose at all.
Conspicuously, the most common conclusion is that we must each determine our own meaning for ourselves. Underlying this verdict is the conviction that personal fulfillment and happiness are paramount, and we must each do whatever makes us happy. Some warn that seeking happiness as a goal in and of itself will result in unhappiness, but their nebulous prescriptions for attaining happiness as a side effect of some other pursuit is hardly useful.
Regardless, if it is up to us to determine the meaning of our own life, then the inevitable implication is that life has no ultimate or inherent meaning. If the meaning of life is whatever we each say it is, then it is not objective; it is not intrinsic or transcendent. It is just a personal opinion, a desire, or perhaps a deception. True meaning is just an elusive fairytale to which we play along, until the lights are turned off and reality wins. And reality always wins.
Each of us is granted about 80 years to concoct our own meaning, seek after our own fleeting happiness, and then return to the ground without consequence for how we lived. Sure, our lives may hold consequences for others for a generation, maybe two, but we ourselves answer to no one. Ultimately there is no justice, no pleasure, and no reward for toil or travail. And the one who gives herself to the service of others is a fool.
This is the conclusion I came to as I was nearing the end of my college career and contemplating my future. I believed the old adage that childhood is the best time of our life, and since I didn’t particularly enjoy my childhood, I wasn’t exactly excited for the next best thing. I thought of the possibilities that remained open to me – going to work, earning money, using that money to pay my bills, maybe saving up for a vacation only to return to work and do it all over again. None of it was appealing. And worst of all, it seemed utterly meaningless.
So what if I contribute to the economy? I’m still going to die, and what will I have gained? So what if make friends, tolerate them, even make their lives better? What was that to me? Perhaps I’d get a dog. That’d be nice. He could guard my home, keep me company in the evenings, and one day I’d come home and he’d be dead, and I’d be devastated. Is any of it worth it? For what? A little occasional enjoyment? What is it all for? Why should I spend another minute working hard and depleting myself for a life that has no ultimate meaning or purpose? Should I expend my life so that someone else can enjoy the fruit of my toil?
My counselor at the time prescribed a change of attitude. She advised that I seek a new perspective by thinking more about the enjoyment life offers now and less about what it means ultimately. So I made a list of the “good things” I could enjoy now – dogs, roller coasters, the ocean, boats, sky diving, sunshine, fall trees, spring flowers – and solidified my suspicion that there was nothing to be gained under the sun. “Futility, futility, all is futility,” I concluded. “For all are from dust and to the dust all return.”
It turns out my perspective placed me in good company. In fact, many of the most thoughtful philosophers ever to live wrestled with this same problem. Some ultimately accepted that life has no meaning, and spent the rest of their lives trying to come to terms with this belief that wars against every longing and intuition in our soul. Others decided to create their own meaning, some finding contentment, even pleasure, before they died.
Many philosophers took their own lives, most having concluded that a life without ultimate meaning, or at least without the health needed to pursue their own self-defined meaning, was not worth living. And still others looked to the Source of their longings and found God to be the best explanation for all of reality, including the very real desires for significance, purpose, and meaning.
I eventually came to agree with this last group of bright and thoughtful men and women, who became convinced that our longing for meaning was placed within our souls by a good and loving God, who created us in His image and revealed Himself to us, that we may know and exercise His will for our lives.
If we are right, and God can be trusted to reveal Himself to humanity, then our purpose is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. He has given us everything we need to live out our purpose through His Word, the Holy Scriptures, which reveal a good, true, and beautiful God who always acts with purpose and has imbued each of us with dignity, value, and meaning.
We need not suppress our intuitions. That for which our heart longs is real. It exists. But there is a cost. We come to know Him, to enjoy Him, and to display His glory as we are released from the grip of all the world’s counterfeit pleasures, in part through loss, pain, and suffering.
The One who gives us the meaning we desire does not give us instant comfort or ease. He does not prioritize our health or wealth or prosperity now. In fact, He requires that we submit all of our treasures, passions and longings, even our very life, to Him, knowing that He is the only One who can truly satisfy. He allows trials that shape our character and draw us closer to Him. He allows suffering through which we let go of all the empty promises that cannot deliver. And when we have a thriving, trusting, satisfying relationship with God through Christ, we are “crowned with a meaningful life now and a marvelous future that will last forever.”
God is the best explanation for the universal human longing for ultimate meaning. We can suppress that longing, or we can even make up our own meaning, but nothing will ever satisfy like the meaning for which we were created and by which we will find ultimate and lasting joy.
“For if the dead are not raised then let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” ― Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 15:32
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Despair-Inducing Quotes on the Meaning of Life
“The only purpose of our lives consists in waking each other up and being there for each other.” – Johanna Paungger
“I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.” ― Pablo Casals
“The meaning of life is that it is to be lived.” ― Bruce Lee
“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” ― Joshua J. Marine
“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” – Joseph Campbell
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” ― Viktor E. Frankl
“Some people define the true meaning of life by having a successful career, getting married and raising a family. We only need to widely open our eyes to see its beauty and understand its true essence. Think positive and flush out negative thoughts.” ― Vic Claros Obaob
