«What is the sense of life?»

— What is the sense of life?

I have been asked this question three times in the last month. I don’t like it: for me today it is extremely abstract and not filled with content. I do not know the answer to it, and to be honest, this answer is not interesting to me.

But a lively curiosity is caused by people who ask this question. Therefore, without answering, I ask:

What prompts you to ask this question? And what exactly do you mean: the meaning of life for you or the meaning of existence in general?

I remember well what motivated me. My search for the meaning of life began in my teens. I really wanted to feel not like a worthless teenager, but a person destined for something more. Meaning for me was equal to purpose, mission.

I really loved books in which ordinary people discovered superpowers in themselves. He believed that I was born in the wrong era and in general it would be better for me to live in a different world, which I invented myself. There I had a mission, there I knew the meaning of my existence … But it was a virtual world.

In parallel, I was looking for meaning in reality. Not to say that I put the question in this way: «What is the meaning of life?» I just had a feeling of dissatisfaction with myself and the world. And I was looking for answers in the field of religious and esoteric thought that flourished in post-Soviet Russia. I looked closely at Krishna literature, even bought a hefty volume of «Source of Eternal Delight» by Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada himself. But alas, I did not find any pleasure in The Source of Eternal Delight, it turned out to be an extremely boring reading.

Then there was a stage of nihilism. Favorite book was Ecclesiastes with his «And there is nothing new under the sun», «All is vanity of vanities and vexation of the spirit.» I still love this book of the Bible, but I perceive it differently.

As my involvement in adult life grew, I was increasingly occupied not with the question of what is the meaning of life in general, but with the problems of specifically my activity. The feeling of meaninglessness grew during the search for “my job”: a senior psychology teacher at a university — a bunch of interviews in all possible and impossible places, even for the position of a household appliances salesman — director of a youth clothing store … and again a senior psychology teacher at a university.

Later, I wrote a dissertation on the topic of self-alienation of the individual, including the loss of meaning. However, by this time the question «Why am I doing this at all?» gone — there was more and more emotional satisfaction from what I was doing.

And here they began to ask me what is the meaning of life.

Most often — in the form of «I don’t know why I live» and «My life has no meaning.» Once they asked directly: “How can I find the meaning of my life? I look at the people who surround me, they have some kind of insignificant life, meaningless. Work-home-work, dull rest, swarming in the country … I don’t want it like that!

I don’t want to get into philosophical jungle about what meaning is and what it consists of. I want something alive, to get away from abstraction to the human level.

How to answer if you are asked what is the meaning of life? The first step is to figure out what meaning is. Talking to people about how they understand this, I received answers indicating that people identify:

• purpose and meaning (“Why are you doing all this?”);
• meaning and meaning (“What is the meaning of this word?”);
• their understanding and meaning (“His speech is some kind of nonsense”).

All this is really the edge of meaning. Things, phenomena, processes taking place in the world and my actions — all this acquires a personal meaning when it becomes involved in my life world, which is woven from my needs, feelings and values, and the values ​​are not abstract, but filled with emotional content.

It is curious: it is useless to look for yourself inside yourself, you need to turn to the outside world, but we can comprehend the meaning of certain actions only when they turn out to be consonant with our own inner voice.

My life takes on meaning the moment I become involved in what I do. That is, when my actions are related to my needs, evoke emotions in me, and coincide with personal values. The mismatch between what we value and what we do creates alienation. This has a simple corollary: it is useless to talk about the meaninglessness of other people’s actions without knowing their values ​​and what emotions these actions arouse in them.

A person who asks what is the meaning of life and says that there is no meaning in his life informs me that he has lost contact with his own needs and emotions, and, more broadly, with his own life world.

So for me, the meaning is belonging. The meaning of things for me lies in my connection with them. And then an old object, which objectively has no value, acquires meaning if it is associated with the memory of a dear person.

I have old shelves hanging in my house, which my father carved from wood. They are made to last, but I don’t leave them just because they hold books. Their meaning lies in the fact that this is the work of my father, part of his material heritage and part of my connection with him. This is part of my life world.

For some, archeology is a completely meaningless thing. Once I participated in an archaeological expedition. The inhabitants of the villages along the banks of the Amur sometimes did not understand this word at all, and then we said that we were geologists. “Ah, you are looking for oil!” and the faces of the people lit up with understanding. Oil is included in the life worlds of these people as a significant phenomenon.

And the fragments of the pots… But for me it makes sense — it is in the emotionally experienced feeling of connection with past generations, in the feeling of being part of a historical process directed to the future. And my hobby — archeology — only makes sense in the context of this feeling.

So what is the meaning of life? A funny detail: the people who found it often do not even understand what it is about. If the question of meaning and meaninglessness arose, then I think it is worth asking yourself: why does what I have have nothing to do with my needs, emotions and values? Loss of meaning is an unwillingness to make emotional contact with what you have or with what surrounds you. How this happened is the question that the psychologist should ask.

“…What is the meaning of life for me?”

How is it that you don’t feel the connection between what you do and what is meaningful to you?

What if there is nothing important in my life?

— Well, let’s talk about how you devalue the world around you …

And no talk about the meaning of life.