👋 Hey phi-lazy-phers
What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? These are two of the most fundamental philosophical questions that people have wrestled with throughout the history of human consciousness. If you’re a long-time reader of this newsletter, you’ll remember we discussed meaning in two different, yet similar, Philosophy Phocus posts: Existentialism and Nihilism.
Rather than continuing to feed a well-fed horse by repeating those ideas, I’d like to talk about a Japanese philosophy I recently stumbled upon called, ikigai. It’s defined as a “motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living.” It’s about working on things that touch our very core. It’s the intersection of passion, mission, vocation, and profession, infused with meaning. It gives us a reason to get up in the morning. Rather than sitting around doing nothing, it says we find happiness by staying busy working on things that drive us. There are claims this concept contributes to Japan having the highest life expectancy among countries.
As mentioned above, “meaning” is one thing philosophers have ruminated on for ages:
Viktor Frankl
The meaning of life is to give life meaning.
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Alan Watts
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so… The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.
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Anaïs Nin
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
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Albert Camus
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstaces, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.
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Ravindranath Tagore
The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.
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Hannah Arendt
The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
He who has a why can bear almost any how.
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Confucius
Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.
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Reinhold Niebuhr
Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it.
Many philosophers believe that it is impossible to know whether a universal meaning for humans exists, and even if one does, it’s impossible to discover. So, they say, the pursuit of such a discovery is absurd.
It is possible, though, to create and define our own meaning. Pull out a notebook or a blank document and list the people, passions, causes, or ideas that give you a reason to get up in the morning. Write down what you believe your meaning to be at this stage of your life. As Anaïs Nin suggested above, craft your individual story. Then, reread what you wrote each day this week, tweaking it as necessary, and let it fill the day ahead with purpose and intentionality.
Additional reading if you are intrigued:
The Myth of Sisyphus [a short essay by Albert Camus]
Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It [a book about meaning by Daniel Klein]
Man’s Search for Meaning [a book about meaning through the lens of Viktor Frankl who was forced to labor in four different Nazi death camps.]
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✌️ Until next week, happy philosophizing.
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