We’re told that life is supposed to have some meaning. Some goal, some purpose. The truth is that we don’t know. Because we don’t know, most people are scared and try finding some meaning in life, and that can be a lot like trying to interview an octopus.

Maybe life’s purpose is to find meaning. Maybe there is no actual meaning. After all, if our lives have meaning, that would mean that everything else has meaning, and all of that meaning would have a deeper meaning.

But what does that all mean? What do we gain from having meaning other than comfort? Why can’t we simply be?

There doesn’t need to be a point to life. Realizing there isn’t an inherent point that you need to figure out can be freeing. Appreciating that life has no inherent point frees you to create your own point, your own meaning. Recognizing that you can create your meaning, that you can simply enjoy your one and only life, with all of its ups and downs, maybe the most freeing experience of all. As the co-creator of Rick and Morty said, “everything is the meaning of life.”

‘There Is No Point: Believing there is no point in life can be depressing or freeing.‘, William Berry, LMHC., CAP., Psychology Today, October 19, 2017

I’ve been ‘being’ for a while, and it’s been a pretty full time job. I don’t really need a layer of meaning on top of it that someone else provides. I’d rather interview an octopus.

I think interviewing an octopus would be fun. They might not think so, though.

The point is that there doesn’t have to be a point. When I say that, it concerns some people who expect people to be satisfied with the mundane as having meaning. In the end, we die, we’re either combusted or buried or fed to fish – and interestingly in the Himalayas, there’s a sky burial which is not what you think. Life can be meaningless, a variable to which we assign a value.

The trouble sometimes is assigning a value to that variable. That value can change, and it often does when we’re not paying attention. Sometimes it just sits there with a null value for a while, and that’s ok too. Eventually there will be some purpose or meaning, even if it is to find that purpose or meaning.