Life as a quest for meaning

Life is a quest for meaning, but that meaning does not have to be absolute. We can find meaning in the meaningless: striving to be an Olympic weightlifter, hiking to the top of a mountain, running a marathon. There is always something left to attach meaning to to attach meaning to.

Although it is nice to imagine that our goals and meaning are derived in some absolute way (and maybe we should strive for them to be) they don't have to be absolute to feel meaningful to us. When we play sports or video games we create imaginary obstacles for ourselves just to be frustrated by them and then overcome them.

The The Existential Vacuum and Nothingbutness makes it easy to see everything as meaningless, and this may be true in theory, but practically there is The meaning of struggle + self-transcendence and Work Love and Courage that are so often what brings us that feeling of meaning.

This is taking the Optimistic Nihilism view as in To be moral is to actualize your potential, so you get to decide what you will do with your tiny influence.


Question: Should we be striving for more absolute meaning? -> The Moral Landscape