This October the seasonal change really sucked. I read, however, Daniel Lieberman's The Story of the Human Body. I guess I would say the following:
Meaning is an empty concept, which can be defined in any which way, and thus is spurious, or has no possibility of stability. It is like an empty placeholder, which can be filled with anything; but as soon as you get depressed (your brain is unable to see purposes, to make plans, to visualize the future), the placeholder is flipped upside down and the meaning falls out. In October, as I got depressed, I felt that the foundations of my life, upon which I had been certain, were thinning out like the weaker Autumn trees, evaporating, until I lived my life not knowing why I lived it anymore. Naturally, as soon as I adjusted to the seasonal change, the sap of my body flowed meaningfully again.
Farming is 6,000 years old, which is nothing; our bodies are still those of our hunter-gatherer past. Hunter-gatherers worked collaboratively to hunt, were egalitarian, shared food, lived in camps of 60-100 (we are not adapted for Instagram audiences), and most importantly walked a lot more than we do. Their landscapes were not filled with threatening noises. While they died younger than we do, they do not suffer from morbidities from our maladaption to the environment around us.
When you share food to your loved ones, the question of meaning is not present. When you work on something with your partner, you feel love. Vacations are often places where couples fight, because they are here merely to enjoy, and not to work together on anything. Working together with someone fulfills our evolutionary need, and hence provides us with not meaning, but no longer the question of meaning. Being in nature, walking, all these things, by fulfilling our evolutionary needs — deep breathing, waking early to see the sun — playing a vigorous sport, defending a younger brother, taking care of an elderly parent, all these activities, full of sunlight, beggar the question of meaning, and prove the question of meaning to be merely an intellectual's overthinking mistake.
Our brains evolved to do inductive reasoning for things like tracking paths in a forest. When those tools are applied to empty thought, that same power of inductive reasoning comes up with scary questions: What is after death? What is the point of all this? The powers which we gained for mere simple tasks, for visualizing the map of the forest, for seeing our loved one's face, overwhelm us now because they are operating on immaterial things, matters of empty thought. We use our reasoning abilities outside of their proper field.
Have you read Frankel's writings on the will to meaning, Val? His framework might be relevent to your case. I view meaning sources as ever-changing, based on our shifting value structures & environments. Doesn't mean that it's easy to find 'em, but at least we can understand their fleetness.
That might be a feature. This part strikes me as as positive outcome:
"I keep hoping that I can outsmart life and achieve my way to meaning. First it was being insanely good at math competitions, then it was getting into Harvard, which was then followed by a finance job, which have now been replaced by publishing a novel and being able to making a living from my Substack."
Look in the mirror! That's amazing, all of it! I'm don't support a hardcore, intense lifestyle, but one can appreciate these achievements. The fact our self defined goals change over time makes the journey interesting.
Haha thanks! I intentionally mixed many things I haven't done (and might never be able to do) into the parts that you quoted, but I could definitely be much more appreciative of what I have done. I haven't read Frankel yet, it's high time I do. Thank you for the recommendation :)
I don't know if this will help you, but what I found helpful was reshaping my understanding of meaning. Instead of taking it as some pre-ordained, external thing that I have to find/come across *somehow*, I took it that life is devoid of such "ghosts", and that any meaning to my life I get to choose/define for myself. It's actually a blessing to be born with the freedom to do so.
At the end of the day, it's true that I'll still have to find out what I want to choose. But now it's down to my choice - I'm more so in the driver's seat - and that helped taper off the angst.
No worries, nothing "sexy" haha, I've chosen to focus on more day-to-day areas. I feel like anything grandiose takes too much guesswork, and with limited time, the more of it I spend frantically guessing, the less I'll have to dedicate to these more tangible things right in front of me which offer a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction in their own right.
- Parents: I'm from an immigrant family, and my parents have had to work incredibly hard to give me better opportunities. I don't think they've ever had a chance to really enjoy life (it's all just been work for them) - so it's a bit like they've never had the chance to learn how to have fun. Whenever I can, I try to show them around to fun places to go/fun things to do to try and get them started.
- Close friends: the more faces come and go (as I change work, places of residence), the more I appreciate the ones that have been with me for a long time. That kind of trust and comfort can only be built over time, and I wouldn't want to lose any of them.
- Interests and hobbies: might be somewhat unique to me - we moved around quite a bit when I was little, and with my parents as busy as they were, I never got involved in a lot of extracurriculars as a kid. As an adult, I'm discovering and nurturing various hobbies and interests, and seeing myself make progress in them brings a very simple but substantial satisfaction.
- "New" things in general: I feel like part of the magic of childhood came from constantly being in contact with the new (since everything was new). On the other hand, it's so easy to sink into your own bubble in adult working life. So I push myself to try new things, go new places, meet new people every now and then to keep the magic alive :)
Perhaps these things sound mundane, but they do bring me real happiness. And so I've set them out to be what's meaningful to me.
I don't mean to say I have something against "higher callings" or that I've shunned them off altogether - if ever something happens that shows me to a higher source of meaning, I'd be open to it. But that's just it - I'll leave it to life to show me if such a calling awaits me, if and when it decides to show me. Or perhaps no such calling exists for me. Either way's fine, since I would have found a lot of fulfillment from the things above, not having been distracted by anxiously waiting on life.
This October the seasonal change really sucked. I read, however, Daniel Lieberman's The Story of the Human Body. I guess I would say the following:
Meaning is an empty concept, which can be defined in any which way, and thus is spurious, or has no possibility of stability. It is like an empty placeholder, which can be filled with anything; but as soon as you get depressed (your brain is unable to see purposes, to make plans, to visualize the future), the placeholder is flipped upside down and the meaning falls out. In October, as I got depressed, I felt that the foundations of my life, upon which I had been certain, were thinning out like the weaker Autumn trees, evaporating, until I lived my life not knowing why I lived it anymore. Naturally, as soon as I adjusted to the seasonal change, the sap of my body flowed meaningfully again.
Farming is 6,000 years old, which is nothing; our bodies are still those of our hunter-gatherer past. Hunter-gatherers worked collaboratively to hunt, were egalitarian, shared food, lived in camps of 60-100 (we are not adapted for Instagram audiences), and most importantly walked a lot more than we do. Their landscapes were not filled with threatening noises. While they died younger than we do, they do not suffer from morbidities from our maladaption to the environment around us.
When you share food to your loved ones, the question of meaning is not present. When you work on something with your partner, you feel love. Vacations are often places where couples fight, because they are here merely to enjoy, and not to work together on anything. Working together with someone fulfills our evolutionary need, and hence provides us with not meaning, but no longer the question of meaning. Being in nature, walking, all these things, by fulfilling our evolutionary needs — deep breathing, waking early to see the sun — playing a vigorous sport, defending a younger brother, taking care of an elderly parent, all these activities, full of sunlight, beggar the question of meaning, and prove the question of meaning to be merely an intellectual's overthinking mistake.
Our brains evolved to do inductive reasoning for things like tracking paths in a forest. When those tools are applied to empty thought, that same power of inductive reasoning comes up with scary questions: What is after death? What is the point of all this? The powers which we gained for mere simple tasks, for visualizing the map of the forest, for seeing our loved one's face, overwhelm us now because they are operating on immaterial things, matters of empty thought. We use our reasoning abilities outside of their proper field.
Have you read Frankel's writings on the will to meaning, Val? His framework might be relevent to your case. I view meaning sources as ever-changing, based on our shifting value structures & environments. Doesn't mean that it's easy to find 'em, but at least we can understand their fleetness.
That might be a feature. This part strikes me as as positive outcome:
"I keep hoping that I can outsmart life and achieve my way to meaning. First it was being insanely good at math competitions, then it was getting into Harvard, which was then followed by a finance job, which have now been replaced by publishing a novel and being able to making a living from my Substack."
Look in the mirror! That's amazing, all of it! I'm don't support a hardcore, intense lifestyle, but one can appreciate these achievements. The fact our self defined goals change over time makes the journey interesting.
Haha thanks! I intentionally mixed many things I haven't done (and might never be able to do) into the parts that you quoted, but I could definitely be much more appreciative of what I have done. I haven't read Frankel yet, it's high time I do. Thank you for the recommendation :)
I don't know if this will help you, but what I found helpful was reshaping my understanding of meaning. Instead of taking it as some pre-ordained, external thing that I have to find/come across *somehow*, I took it that life is devoid of such "ghosts", and that any meaning to my life I get to choose/define for myself. It's actually a blessing to be born with the freedom to do so.
At the end of the day, it's true that I'll still have to find out what I want to choose. But now it's down to my choice - I'm more so in the driver's seat - and that helped taper off the angst.
Thanks! What have you ended up choosing/ defining for yourself, if you don't mind my asking?
No worries, nothing "sexy" haha, I've chosen to focus on more day-to-day areas. I feel like anything grandiose takes too much guesswork, and with limited time, the more of it I spend frantically guessing, the less I'll have to dedicate to these more tangible things right in front of me which offer a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction in their own right.
- Parents: I'm from an immigrant family, and my parents have had to work incredibly hard to give me better opportunities. I don't think they've ever had a chance to really enjoy life (it's all just been work for them) - so it's a bit like they've never had the chance to learn how to have fun. Whenever I can, I try to show them around to fun places to go/fun things to do to try and get them started.
- Close friends: the more faces come and go (as I change work, places of residence), the more I appreciate the ones that have been with me for a long time. That kind of trust and comfort can only be built over time, and I wouldn't want to lose any of them.
- Interests and hobbies: might be somewhat unique to me - we moved around quite a bit when I was little, and with my parents as busy as they were, I never got involved in a lot of extracurriculars as a kid. As an adult, I'm discovering and nurturing various hobbies and interests, and seeing myself make progress in them brings a very simple but substantial satisfaction.
- "New" things in general: I feel like part of the magic of childhood came from constantly being in contact with the new (since everything was new). On the other hand, it's so easy to sink into your own bubble in adult working life. So I push myself to try new things, go new places, meet new people every now and then to keep the magic alive :)
Perhaps these things sound mundane, but they do bring me real happiness. And so I've set them out to be what's meaningful to me.
I don't mean to say I have something against "higher callings" or that I've shunned them off altogether - if ever something happens that shows me to a higher source of meaning, I'd be open to it. But that's just it - I'll leave it to life to show me if such a calling awaits me, if and when it decides to show me. Or perhaps no such calling exists for me. Either way's fine, since I would have found a lot of fulfillment from the things above, not having been distracted by anxiously waiting on life.