Finding Meaning in the Void

Setting: a foreign world, always eluding our grasp. Abound with incomprehensibles - stuff, raw being - of which we can only obtain mere glimpses, solely see their shadows. We are thrust into this world, our unfamiliar home. We create illusions of veracity, believing we perceive that which is absolutely in existence; we build 3-D models that we take for reality. We mislead ourselves, as we were designed to mislead ourselves. We have no alternative.

When we realize that our “realities” are relative and subjective, that we will never understand the environment in which we live, we learn the absurdity of existence. To live in a world we will never truly know, to reason in a place that has no reason. “Why?” forms a resounding, internal, empty echo. A question that the world will never answer, for it has no voice, language, or explanation. The world simply is, and nothing more. It has no intrinsic meaning.

The abyss can overwhelm and suffocate. How can we live in a meaningless world? What is the point? The answer, of course, lies in oneself.

Meaning is never absolute: a thing never has meaning in itself. Meaning is created by a subjective entity; it is an appraisal or decision one makes, not an inherent quality of any object, event, or pattern. The world may possess no meaning; but we create it. With every experience - every perception, action, thought - we are creating meaning. We recognize distinct objects that have no precise correlates; we notice patterns that are otherwise idle; we find value in that which is fundamentally arbitrary. Through our interaction with the world, we transform the absurd into the rational. We find reasons; we answer the why’s.

Meaning is always relative to someone or something. To imagine that the world has constitutive meaning is no less absurd than a meaningless world: they are reflections of one another. The world can only ever have meaning to someone; and the only meaning that effectively matters is our own. How could it be any other way? Or, rather, why would we want it any other way? A world of meaning that arises from elsewhere appears more alien than the absurd world in which we construct our own meaning. Perhaps it is only in the absurd that man will ever make sense - for only man can fill its void.