What is the meaning of life?

The first thing that I think of when posed this question is that the question itself has two meanings: "What is the meaning of the word life?" and "What is the meaning of what the word life refers to?" Obviously we need to take care of the first question (if that’s possible), before we can adequately address the second.

The word life – like any word – means different things to different people, sometimes it’s used to mean different things within the same context, which can lead to unnecessary confusion. We may not be able to define the term absolutely or universally, but we should at least make clear what we take it to mean in this context, and stick to that meaning as much as possible.

Here, I’m going to keep it simple: I’m using "life" to mean, roughly, everything – including death, dreams, thoughts, feelings, relationships, etc. But note the important difference between life and everything: "life" suggests a moving, growing, vital quality; "everything" suggests something more static – everything that is. I’m not just concerned with everything that is, but everything that was, and the way it came to be; I also want to remain open to everything that might yet become, and the way that might happen. I don’t think it’s even possible to suppose where or when life began or will end.

Now I need to warn you that I’m going to use the word "meaning" to mean slightly different things – sort of – despite my claim that we should always stick to one meaning. [Ironically, "mean" has one of the most ambiguous meanings of all words. It includes (of course) what a word means, the means to an end, the mean (or average) result of a survey, and let’s not forget about the most different (but in some places, the most popular) reference to "mean people."] Except perhaps for the last one, they really aren’t too far apart. I generally take "mean" to refer to a change or effect that goes directly from one thing to another – a kind of conduction, translation, or transformance. So when I talk about the meaning of a word, I’m referring to the word’s function, or effect – its power as a symbol to automatically suggest a specific idea or image in the mind.

So far I’ve stayed fairly true to one meaning of the word "meaning": the meaning of words. But when we talk about the meaning of life, we want to determine what is beyond life, so what life is a "means" towards will become the focal topic of this essay.

Now here’s another little problem: if life is supposed to be a means to something else, then we have to be able to see it as a whole, from the outside, we have to define it. Meaning and definition are not the same thing. When I discussed what the word "life" means, I didn’t really define it; I didn’t draw an outline around life as a finite thing; in fact, I suggested that the meaning of the word should be open, representing something with no definite beginning or end.

Even if life does have a definite beginning, a definite end, there is no way for us to know what came before and what will come after. [You might take life to mean a life – your life, my life, our lives, etc. – but hat isn’t what I’m talking about here. I plan on dealing with that in a future essay.] So whether or not the unity of life has a meaning, it’s impossible for us to say for sure what it is; any hypotheses in this matter would have no evidence to assist with either approval or disposal. Such guesses may not be meaningless – they might have some heuristic value – but they’re awefully distracting and expensive.

It is more effective for us to ignore questions regarding the unity of life, and instead consider the meaning of life at specific moments. In this sense, the meaning of life always depends on given circumstances or conditions; but speaking generally, the meaning of life is always more life. In other words, life is a means to continue living.

That may seem like a tautology – something so obvious that it needn’t be said – but sometimes the most obvious points are the easiest to lose. That’s how so many intelligent people have at some time believed that life is meaningless.

Life cannot be meaningless; we may observe at any time and any place that life is a means to its own continuation. This discussion is itself a continuation of life. Even if you believe that life is meaningless, you must accept that it is at least meaningful enough that it gave you such feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. In turn, how meaningful (or meaningless) those thoughts and beliefs may become will partly depend on decisions you make – to sustain your belief in the meaninglessness of life, or to respond freely to meaningful opportunities. Action is naturally spontaneous; inaction must be learned and maintained by effort.

Skeptics might complain that meaning is "merely" artificial – that things mean what we make them mean – but this tendency is as natural and unavoidable as breathing. And skepticism is no less artificial.

I think it’s impossible to experience objects and events without perceiving some meaning beyond their immediate context. Feelings, ideas, and images continually occur to us, which we automatically extend to other areas of life. We tend to remember these meanings – sometimes more vividly than the real circumstances from which they derived. These ideas and feelings interact on another level of experience – away (but not disconnected) from physical reality – and they continue to generate new, higher-level meanings and purposes. In this way, we learn to perceive and conceive life as a coherent, organized whole, which helps us live more effectively – more meaningfully.

In some sense, life may constitute a coherent whole, but it is never a complete whole. To convince me otherwise, you’d have to convince me that time does not exist, you’d have to convince me that life is finished, you’d have to convince me that we weren’t even having this conversation. If life is finished, then how could we want to convince each other of anything? All feelings of interest, caring, curiosity, desire, fear, ambition, and love would vanish.

Nevertheless, we have a tendency (perhaps we can call it a need) to conceive life as a complete whole, with a static framework or foundation. Maybe it’s because time is so persistent that we forget about it. Or maybe it’s culturally advantageous to pretend life is complete, helping us overcome uncertainty, which helps us meet goals and finish projects.

Did you catch the intended meaning of that last suggestion? It seems to me that our cultural institutions have evolved to favour inert ideas and fixed mindsets. People talk about the value of "getting things done" (often "by any means necessary") as if that is the universally best attitude to have – as if we are always in a state of emergency or intense competition. No doubt there is a lot of intense competition around, but that’s partly of our own making: we’ve learned from our institutions to enjoy the kind of meaning derived by goal-oriented competition.

So to take the time to do what I’ve done may be looked upon by many as a meaningless waste of time – a distraction from the apparently urgent goals that need to be accomplished. Those people will skim these words to find the simplest statement of the meaning – as if the meaning could be worth anything apart from the act, the experience, of writing, reading, and thinking about it. To those people it will seem like I meant merely to say "Life means want you want it to mean. Meaning is what you make."

That’s only a part of my point. What I really mean to illustrate has more to do with the continuity, openness, and incompleteness of meaning. This is impossible to define without falsification – like life itself. It isn’t enough to say that the meaning of life is what you make it: we must never stop saying it, while never completely defining it, or believing in it as a final, ultimate end.

By only serving the meanings and ends that we already believe in, we prevent ourselves from recognizing and generating new ones, we fail to cultivate the ability to make life more meaningful, we cut ourselves off from the most valuable goal we could ever accomplish.