The meaning of life, the million dollar question that we are all hoping to find an answer too. Well, to help answer this question, let’s first turn to Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, who saw countless people die in the concentration camps — the most tragic event in human history.

This tragic life experience, internal contemplation, and work with patients brought him to a revelation — humans are an animal driven by purpose. But what is that purpose?

Starting at the beginning of humanity — the beginning of us — daily life consisted of finding food, water, and shelter, that’s about it.

Survival was about avoiding being eaten by the lion over the horizon.

The point being: staying alive was the focus — that was the meaning — there wasn’t much time for contemplating anything else. Humans merely existed.

Nobody was able to demand avocado toast with their latte that can only be made with almond milk.

So mostly, you have a period where we started out worrying about dying every day and then transitioning into making sure you remember to praise your tribes God every day to find some inner peace because dying tomorrow was slowly becoming less of an issue.

Fast forwarding to today, civilization has brought upon us an opportunity to contemplate things — everything things — wondering about the world we’re placed in; being able to ask, what is our place in all of this?

We realized that even the myth of God cannot bring us meaning. Praising your God isn’t cutting it. So God kind of died and the meaning he carried has seemingly died with it.

Fortunately for you, you’re now the God of your own reality. Don’t waste it; life is short.

So contemplation rears its head, and we need something more. And for some of us, the reality of us not being created for some particular purpose can be devastating.

We desire an answer to understand ourselves. Where does that desire come from?

Contemplating the Question

Science has told us we operate with the desire to spread our offspring and survive. Telling us that we live in a reality of chance existence and seeming randomness with a touch of chaos.

If true, it doesn’t help with the reality of our emotions and feelings of the question of purpose and meaning.

It’s not like spreading our genes is making everyone fulfilled.

This brings us to what Albert Camus calls The Absurd: the conflict between the reality of meaninglessness with the desire for meaning.

We need to take the journey of finding meaning in a meaningless world.

As Viktor Frankl recognized something in his patients: the feeling of existential dread, an observed void consuming us with the sense of nothingness. Whether we admit it or not, we’re all looking for something to fill that void.

Consider this though, take mans best friend, a dog, what do they need? Well, for starters, they need food, water, and shelter. In the case of my puppy, I’m sure to provide her with the occasional toy, some play, and cuddles when she’s willing to oblige.

Overall, my little golden puppy seems happy with the setup we have. She gets plenty of treats, not having to worry about finding water, and I have a friend to have a conversation with that also pretends to understand what I’m saying to her — what a superb setup for both of us.

Although the difference between my dog and humans is, she isn’t commanding me to tell her the purpose of her existence. She doesn’t ask me why dog and human relationships have been so successful; she doesn’t ask me what occurs when you enter a black hole; she doesn’t ask me to explain the strange world in the digital age; she doesn’t worry about how we got here.

So, sure, she needs a comfortable place to sleep, treats, some food, scrap droppings and such. But for some reason, these needs do not quench the human thirst.

We are still left asking, what is the meaning of life? What am I supposed to do with the limited time I have on this earth? And why do I feel this way?

A holy book isn’t working. We can’t seem to find any objective meaning written in the stars for us OR in the discoveries of science. The feeling of purpose seems to be something more profound or at the very least, something else.

Your Meaning

So, let me see what I can do here, friends. No promises.

So we covered food, shelter, and basic safety. Okay.

Then we start rolling out with our fellow humans, building relationships, figuring out which people can handle your annoying quirks and which quirks of peoples you can handle.

Relationships, they tend to fire off some happy stuff in your brain. Generally good stuff.

We find joy in building those relationships from physical, emotional, fun, and those with a little bit of everything.

But, you might be thinking well this doesn’t tell me the meaning of life.

Yeah, you’re right — but it’s important stuff to put you in the right place to contemplate the meaning of life. It’s helpful to understand YOUR answer to the big question.

So the million dollar answer to the million dollar question, what is the meaning of life? Or maybe more accurately stated, what is the meaning of life for YOU? The thing that we want to be — the vision for ourselves — that stuff.

I think some people spend their whole life figuring out the answer to this question. I’m still trying to figure the solution out! And I probably never will— thanks existential dread.

But, nowadays, many of us have the opportunity to contemplate this question that everyone asks themselves at some point in their life.

What does our current society say about achieving the answer? Show me the money, and when you show me the money give me more of that money. Yeah, that stuff.

Our society seems to think that once we get that money, everything will fall magically into place, no effort needed beyond the capital.

I can buy a big house to get lost in, cars that I’ll drive a few times my whole life, some flashy clothes, become an Instagram influencer(real ones), drop 50 grand in Vegas like no big deal, the high life. Get more money to show off the money with stuff.

But it’s empty stuff.

This stuff isn’t inherently wrong. Some people are content with it, but it seems to have limitations for most. Something is missing.

My point is, we seem to forget the point of making money isn’t probably to make more money but to do cool stuff with it for both yourself and others.

Money gives you the means to pursue what you want now, not tomorrow, not next week, literally now.

It’s also probably best not to put off your plans until tomorrow because there’s plenty of things in this world trying to kill you.

Now, happiness and making an adequate amount of money helps make you happy. However, this doesn’t mean the money is causing it. The right amount of money provides you the means to focus on other areas of life—purpose.

The right amount of money gives you something important in life: more time to focus on what you want out of this world.

Once you are in the comfortable section of the middle class to the upper middle class, you have achieved a sweet spot to find your purpose.

Happiness

Well, let’s start with an offshoot problem from our obsession with money; we silly humans have a misconception about happiness.

We wrongly think that if we start that successful startup if we write that book, if we get that person to love us, if we graduate from college, or we complete whatever x thing is for you — happiness will fall into place like magic.

We trick ourselves into thinking specific stuff will fill us with meaning. Until we have said material, and we are disappointed, searching for the next thing.

We wrongfully think after x is done eternal bliss will be achieved, the game is done, life is fulfilled, pain is over, existential dread is gone. It’s not. It’s definitely not. It sucks, but what do and where do we go?

If you’ve ever boughten something, you have desired your whole life — that object you imagine your happy self with — maybe a dream car. Once we get that object, the peak happiness it provides soon fades. We don’t stay in that state of happy bliss.

Finding happiness is not simple. An object cannot provide you a life full of joy. This is not how us lucky humans work. See, us human creatures have a certain baseline for happiness, once you reach that high point of happiness, after a time, you will retrieve back to your baseline level — your neutral zone of happiness. This is what psychologist call the hedonic treadmill.

Seems like a lame setup, but fortunately it can provide us some insight into the question we’re trying to gain some insight into, meaning.

The Place for Meaning

Going back to Frankl, happiness is not the thing to go after; it’s meaning. Happiness fades, but meaning can remain constant.

Well, thanks to the vast difference from human to human by evolution, genetics, and some other science stuff I don’t understand, meaning varies depending on the person. But I’ll choose an example of meaning that I think many watching will agree with, parenthood.

I myself am not a parent, in large part because I can barely take care of myself, and I find taking care of my dog stressful at times. The idea of caring for a child scares me, not for my own sake, but the poor kids.

So sure, parents have ups and downs with their kids. Teenage years I’m sure are stressful to deal with, I was a pain to deal with, but even though the happiness scale goes up and down, the feeling of purpose usually remains constant.

But let me take a step back, I’m not saying everyone should pop out a kid right now to give themselves meaning.

If I did that right now all of a sudden, I’d be thinking about survival way more than the meaning of life.

I’m trying to make the separation between happiness and meaning here so bear with me.

These sources of meaning can be combined. A healthy long-term relationship and being parents, these combined can be a beautiful meaning for many people, but not for all, some need that fulfilling career, some might need a house with a yard, some might need a lot of vacations, some might need a passion project.

My point is it varies from person to person. The balance varies. The other point, you still have ups and downs, but the purpose seems always to get you back up for the battle of life.

Meaning is the thing that seems to be sustainable — something to keep happiness at a healthy constant.

Conclusion

But let’s unpack this a little more. Humans, strange creatures we’re, look for the latest trends, fads, and diets. These trends and fashions don’t work for everyone because humans are much different from each other than we want to realize.

We have different interest, passions, desires, favorite foods, and the list goes on and on — meaning is no different.

Some are driven by helping people; some are driven by writing, some by art, some by building things. The list is endless.

As Frankl talks about, the journey for meaning is one you have to take yourself. It has to be you to figure it out.

Sure, I make it sound so easy, we have to also deal with the feeling of loneliness, inevitable suffering, terrible jobs, being around rude people, being in a universe that doesn’t care about our thoughts and desires. It sucks facing up to these realities sometimes. Trust me; I experience the feeling of those demons in my life as well.

But do you know what’s crazy? Our existence, the fact that we’re even alive, the random occurrences that had to take place to get us here, the small probability that we even should exist, we were the sperm that won friend, and that’s saying something.

We are conscious of our existence and can search for the stuff that brings us joy and meaning.

All of us are trying to figure this game of being out.

Maybe we need to fight against the meaninglessness of life by finding our own meaning.

And one thing is certain, none of us know what we’re doing in the journey of life, but at least we all have that to share.

At the end of the day, meaning is a puzzle you have to solve yourself, and nobody is going to solve it for you.