This may sound silly, or philosophical, what do you think is the meaning of life? Please don’t tell me it is "42"!

Probably rather foolish for me to try to answer this sincerely, but…

I believe in the paradox that 1) life doesn’t inherently have any meaning, and 2) anyone who’s fully alive knows that it’s incredibly meaningful, and why. We don’t experience the world as it is "out there" in some objective reality; we experience the world we perceive through our senses and conceive in the neural connections we create. Meaning happens there. What we imagine can become tangible, concrete. It’s pretty spooky that way.

If you meant it in terms of "what’s a person supposed to do with her/his life?", well. My best guess is that our purpose here is to figure out what our positive relationship is with the world: what joy we find in it, where and with whom and why, and how best we can contribute to making it a better place.

Something like that. Did I mention that I’m doing this Q&A on two hours’ sleep? I may have to retract half of what I’ve written in the morning.

Ask me anything

Posted by Vienna in general