I have been working to recall the steps by which I regained & reclaimed Meaning in my life.
And specifically, how I went from a childhood religious metaphysics, to teenaged Existentialism, to where I am now.
Perhaps you’ve gone through this, too.
I've mentioned it previously: I, too, in my later teen years, experienced a combination of angst, ennui, depression, resistance, and rebellion, when I stopped believing in religious, metaphysical transcendence.
Without a Higher Power imposing a transcendent meaning on Life, I seemed to be left with no meaning, or purpose, at all.
Two thoughts were important, in my return to Meaningfulness.
The first was an observation based on my answer to the First Cause argument.
I grasped clearly that, if the Universe required a Creator, then so, too, did that Creator require a Meta-Creator. The humorous rejoinder, “it’s turtles all the way down,” notwithstanding.
It simply made more sense to accept the creator-less Universe, than to posit a creator-less Creator. (After all, the former … the Universe … has the virtue of actually existing).
So much for the “First Cause”.
But what made the issue clearer for me was this:
Imagine a time when the Universe, including the fact of Time itself, will go out of Existence.
Not just that Everything will be change, or be destroyed, or dissolve into an undifferentiated chaos à la entropy … but that Everything will simply stop existing, for no reason.
Well, that's absurd; whatever happens to Everything, the one thing it makes no sense to imagine is that it will all, suddenly, causelessly, disappear.
The notion that the Universe must've come into existence makes exactly as much sense.
If I can't imagine everything ... literally everything: matter, energy, the Universe in toto ... disappearing suddenly, and for no reason, then neither can I imagine it appearing from nothing, for no reason, causelessly.
"Meaning" is just the same.
Meaning isn't transcendent.
But more: it would be a disaster for the very notion if it was.
A transcendent Meaning wouldn't be better grounded, it would be causeless and, were it supernaturally ordained, it would be wholly subjective (and capricious).
It's precisely because Meaning is metaphysically delimited (by our nature) and personally chosen (by ourselves) that it has substance and merit.
The second thought was that Meaning must be Individual, because the guiding mechanism in choosing, and acting, and actualizing values, goals, and purpose, is Individual ... the one doing so IS an Individual ... and this makes Meaning, not more subjective, but less so.*
Just as the locus of Free Will is the individual mind, so too, is the locus of valuing, of experiencing Meaning.
Again, if Meaning were imposed, it would be arbitrary.
Like an edict from a king, or a priest, or the neighbors, or the whole rest of Humanity, an imposed Meaning would be separate from** the mind which is expected to receive, and understand, and apply, and experience, and live this edict.
No, for life to have meaning, that meaning must be chosen, and experienced, and lived, and celebrated, first-hand, by each of us, for each of us, individually.
Not good enough? Should Meaning be more than that?
But that's everything. Everything you've ever wanted, and pursued, and achieved, and enjoyed, and cared about, and embraced, and fought for, and relished, and loved.
What more could there be?
What more could one even WANT there to be?
There's nothing greater, nothing else worth wanting.
Everything is enough.
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* It's all of the alternatives we imagine, which would be more subjective.
** And given the complexity of life, such an arbitrarily imposed meaning would be, in a thousand ways, contradictory to the judgement of one’s mind.
Superb!