How to Create a Meaningful Life in a Meaningless World
A good life is not an intellectual problem to be solved.
What is the meaning of life?
I don’t have an answer. This question has stumped wiser men than me. The fact that none of the great minds has ever found a single satisfactory answer leads me to suspect there is no one answer to the question of a meaningful life.
Instead, we each need to find meaning in our own lives.
My Story
I suffered a crisis of meaning years ago. Amid the doldrums of life, I sought an answer. So I filled out quizzes, wrote uncounted journal pages, and made lists of my interests, abilities, the world’s needs, ect. Then, I crafted ven diagrams to map the intersection of those various attributes.
None of that got me where I wanted to go. I remained mired in meaninglessness, questioning my life choices and wondering about my place in the world.
My Mistake
My problem was that I made pursuing meaning an intellectual exercise. I diligently and exhaustively compiled those lists in a brute-force attempt to answer my question.
But finding meaning in your life is not an academic exercise. If it were, those great minds…
