Finding Meaning in Meaninglessness

I was somewhere that I knew I would have to be for a while, and started to get hungry. I finally decided that the over-priced under-nourishing who knows how old it was item was worth the $2.50, only to have the machine take the money, and not drop the item. It is that point when my mind started racing through all the things I could have done with those $2.50. There was no way to logically rationalize why I should be okay with it, and no meaningful rationalization that would satisfy either.

Knowing I wasn’t willing to throw down another couple bucks in hope of getting something else, or making them both fall down, and knowing I didn’t want to spend the night in jail or pay a fine for breaking the machine, I just decided to solve my hunger problem was hopeless.

The philosopher Kenny Rogers, in his treatise on the nature of life said, “You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. You never count your money, when you're sittin' at the table, there'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.”

We can’t fight every battle, and we shouldn’t try—if there’s one thing that’s ours to pick in life, is on which hill we want to die.

Did I want my life’s legacy to be that I was the man that never let anyone or anything including a dumb vending machine make me a fool?

It might have landed me on youtube, with the headline, “man loses his mind to a vending machine,” but that would only immortalize the fact that I was not being logical nor meaningful in my response to disappointment.

But wasn’t it fair? For me to expect that a simple machine hold up its end of the deal?

Not to take this from zero to sixty, but do we treat people like vending machines? Do we just want to kick them when they eat our money, time, or energy? Do we tell ourselves it wasn’t worth the first $2.50 for junk anyway, and definitely not worth another $2.50 to find out?

Could you list off people that owe you money and how much; could you list off the people that have borrowed specific things and not brought them back? Can you list money or things you borrowed and forgot to give back?

I could say we are each going to be more aware of what others owe us than what we may owe them. However, I’m sure many people would say, “Ha! That’s why I don’t borrow anything from anyone!” I think that’s the hill we end up dying on, proving that we can do everything by ourselves, that we don’t need anyone.

Logic and meaning are very different, one makes sense, and the other feels right. It makes sense to do everything ourselves and not owe anyone anything, but does it feel right? I don’t mean, whether it feels right to owe someone, but to do everything ourselves?

Logic is measurable and predictable—to make more money, it’s pretty straightforward. To make more meaning in life, it’s more of a guess and check system. That is where things go wrong, we are pretty good at guessing, but freak out when we check.

The suffering of life is easy to see, sickness, old age, tragedy, and death, but meaning takes gratitude, patience, diligence, courage, compassion, humility, and hope. Consider this, what if we take the time and energy to develop all those skills and then they don't work? That is one of the scariest things in life, to think that all the work we put into finding meaning might be a waste.

Our experience might seem to prove that no matter what we do, we keep failing. Maybe we feel we are fairly virtuous people, maybe even in the top ten percent of people we know, and it still doesn’t seem to be enough. Why should there be a situation where all the compassion, patience, and courage we can muster is still not enough? Isn’t that evidence that there is no meaning to life if trying isn’t enough?

Feeling courageous, compassionate, or any of the other virtues is not the same as being courageous or compassionate. Feeling we are something versus being something is similar to the difference between self-esteem and self-confidence. Self-esteem is temporary and more poignant because it is amplified by aspects in our circumstance that are helping us; for example, maybe a compliment, sincere or not may make us feel good about that aspect of our self, whether or not we are actually employing all we can in that aspect of our life. Self-confidence, on the other hand, is steadily being able to trust in ourselves to do, and overcome, what we need to. It is possible that on a regular basis we experience waves of feeling courageous, compassionate, and so on; however, we shouldn't be looking to feel the waves, otherwise when a wave hits we will feel like we are done when really development of virtues are life-long ventures.

On that journey, what are those virtues before they are complete?

Is it really humility if the humility is only halfway developed?

It might seem harsh, but if a cake is only halfway cooked, it’s just hot dough. That doesn’t mean the work done so far is bad, it means that if you are trying to put candles in the cake, or trying to frost it, it wont work yet. We can’t say a virtue like humility is not worth it until we have fully developed it and can see what it actually does. You might not like eating cake dough, but that doesn’t mean you won’t like the cake when it is done.

This happens quite clearly with half-developed compassion, where the first half of compassion we are good at, doing something nice for someone else, whether that is lending an ear or a shoulder to cry on, but we don’t do the second part, which is not expect anything in return. Half-developed compassion is bartering at best, and though half of it might seem meaningful, the other half seems intensely meaningless when we expose it for what it is.

Is our compassion half-developed? Is it three-quarters? How could we know? That’s the problem, we don’t… but it’s okay, because it doesn’t matter. We are just supposed to keep working on it. Even once we are proficient at compassion or any of the other virtues, we can still keep getting better.

It is very humbling to me to realize that each time I feel let down by someone, that I was expecting something from them that wasn’t them. I could try and label it anyway I want, but when it comes down to it, when I feel someone has let me down, really the selfless love I thought I had, was merely condition conveniences… exposed by the other person not being convenient for me. Shell Silverstein put it well in his poem, “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O,” when the missing piece askes the Big O, “What do you want from me,” and he says, “Nothing.”

When we expect things from people, we don’t realize we are doing it, but we are putting conditions on the other person only considering what we think is fair. When we are disappointed we think, “I wouldn’t let someone down in that way, them doing it is inexcusable.” And that’s the problem, we want them to be a mirror of us, otherwise, they are inconvenient… yes, I know that is a brutal way of looking at it, but even if we can distract our mind from consciously considering what we are actually doing, our emotions will know it’s messed up and fight us.

So, what does this all mean?

Logic is results-oriented, and meaning is intention oriented, and we shouldn’t confuse the two. It is very tempting to try and measure logic by intention, but do you want your surgeon to just intend the surgery to go well, or do you want it to actually go well?

Similarly, with meaning, we shouldn’t make its results-oriented, and when we try to measure it, it will just frustrate us. Since we can’t measure our progress in the development of virtues, it is sometimes hard to feel confident we are moving in the right direction… but just the fact that you care about going in the right direction shows that your intent is pretty good. It is a lot more hopeful that we can change when we know what to change, and it is a lot more motivating to change when we see that the change is meaningful. Whether you feel that you have some really meaningful change pressing on you, or you feel you have found the absolute epitome of meaninglessness, either should be excited, because you know which way to head—either towards the meaning you can feel, or the opposite direction of the meaninglessness you have found.

The only thing that somewhat can be measured or aimed at through our progress is hope. Knowing there is more meaning to find makes us hopeful, and knowing something meaningful can happen with enough hope is meaningful.