Everything Is Enough.
On the Source of Meaning ...
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.
___________________________
* 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!
A friend asks, "What is the point of existing?"
"Points" and purposes, goals and meanings, are chosen, not imposed. The point is up to you. And me.
What else could be the case? How else could it be?
I still find that this observation ... the observation that's it's up to each of us ... makes purpose ... life ... more grounded and meaningful, not less so.
If deciding your purpose seems subjective, or arbitrary, how is it less so if some external force imposes it?
Between "I've decided what my life means, what it is, what it's for", versus "God decided" or "the Universe decided" or "Society decided" or "the State decided", it's all of the latter assertions that I find arbitrary.
[My friend mentions their chosen career, about which they're very passionate and have been quite successful...] "... but it is not the reason I was born. It is not why I came into existence."
That's true. There is no reason I came into existence, above and beyond the actual reasons it happened ... I was conceived (in the usual manner), and I was born.
That's it.
"We should want to know why 'existence exists.'"
This may be the crux of the matter ... if you feel that there can/must be a transcendent super-existence "out there", a cause or reason beyond existence itself.
A something beyond everything, that is responsible for everything.
That something ... "God" or the Demi-urge ... would then be Something Else ... which of course leads to all of the contradictions of First Cause arguments, e.g. what created the creator?
(If we can imagine a creator-less Creator ... a creator-less anything ... then a creator-less Universe is the simpler answer, preferable by Occam's Razor. And that answer has the virtue of limiting us to things we actually know.)
"If the universe was created by an evil God, or we are part of a simulation, or any number of other mystic possibilities ... then why bother with this existence business?"
"Why bother?" is a great question, and should be applied to ANY worldview. Even if we lived in Voltaire's Best Of All Possible Worlds, even if the Earth was created with us in mind, and we're imbued with a Higher Purpose, even if we were assigned Our Raison D'être ...
... the question "why bother?" would remain.
Even if our ends were designed, and assigned, we'd still have to decide whether or not to pursue those ends.
We'd still have to answer the question, "why bother?"
Whatever the form, nature, and origins of the Universe, it still comes down to us. To the decision, in each and every moment, to carry on. To make the effort to live.
"If there is no reason for me to have come into existence, and no reason for the universe to exist, then any reason I come up with ... still seems hollow."
I know that feeling ... I went through that for years.
But someone/something else telling me, "here, I've decided your reason for being," is not less hollow; it's more so.
To the extent that that there IS meaning, and beauty, and joy, and purpose, and passion, those things (and all of the other values I experience) are a function of me, of my mind and body, of my soul and spirit, of the life I've lived and the life I'm living right now.
To the extent a person still yearns for something external to everything, or a purpose defined and imposed by someone/something else's higher purposes, there is no answer. There is no "external to everything".
In the end, it's akin to asking "who created everything?" and realizing the question isn't just unanswerable; the question makes no sense.
It's not just that we don't know what's beyond everything. Everything is everything. Everything is all there is.
And that's why I find that everything is enough.
Because all of life's "enoughs" ... all of the reasons of living, and doing, and being, and creating, and striving, and loving, and celebrating ... are within everything.
Within existence.
Within you and I.