LOWER EAST SIDE DAILY - April 13, 1987
Let’s begin, if we can, with the concept of “meaning.” It’s a small word, just two syllables, yet people seem to stake entire lives on it. We search for meaning, crave meaning, assign meaning to everything from relationships to our morning coffee, as if without it, life is just an elaborate collection of pointless events. But here’s the problem: what if “meaning” doesn’t actually mean anything? And if it doesn’t, then what, precisely, are we doing here?
Consider, first, that meaning is largely invented. It’s not like gravity, or death—things that happen to us whether we like it or not. Meaning is something we make up to feel a little less lost, a way to sprinkle narrative onto a chaotic universe that doesn’t care if we exist at all. Look around: does the chair you’re sitting on have “meaning”? Not unless you give it some. Without our input, it’s just a chair. It holds no inherent significance beyond the fact that it happens to be keeping you off the floor. So, is meaning just a human trick to avoid existential vertigo, a psychological flotation device in an otherwise bottomless sea of randomness?
Then there’s the problem of consistency. If meaning were real, you’d think it would be the same for everyone. But what one person finds deeply meaningful, another might find utterly mundane. One person’s life purpose could be another person’s Tuesday afternoon. Meaning, it seems, is subjective, as easily discarded as it is assigned. I’ve watched people break down into tears over a single song, while others hear the same tune and wonder if they left the oven on. If meaning were something solid, like a rock, shouldn’t we all trip over it in the same way?
And what about things that once held meaning, only to lose it over time? Look back at an old photograph, one you thought would mean “everything” to you forever. Perhaps it still does, but more likely, it now stirs a vague sense of nostalgia at best, or the need to clean out your attic at worst. Meaning, it appears, is perishable. It spoils like milk, fades like a suntan, or shifts entirely, making one wonder if it was ever there to begin with. You might as well try to hold onto a cloud.
Then we arrive at a paradox: if meaning can be so easily created, altered, and erased, does it even exist at all? Imagine, if you will, a friend who borrows $20 and then, instead of paying it back, hands you a coupon for a free hug. He says, “It’s worth the same amount.” Well, no, it’s not. Meaning, like that hug, only holds value if you believe it does. Otherwise, it’s just an awkward interaction in your personal space. So when we talk about “the meaning of life,” what are we really saying? That life is like a hug coupon? A vague gesture that holds value only if we pretend it does?
Now, some might say that meaning is about “connection”—that it’s not about the words or the symbols, but about the bonds they create between people. But that sounds suspiciously like an excuse for all the things we don’t understand. We call it “meaning” to feel closer to something ineffable, but if it can’t be pinned down, doesn’t it run the risk of vanishing entirely, like a cat that’s never actually in the room with you? If meaning is simply the act of assigning significance to something, then meaning is, in essence, an illusion—a well-dressed lie we tell ourselves to keep going. And if it’s an illusion, how meaningful can it really be?
In the end, the meaning of meaning, if meaning doesn’t even mean anything, is a riddle we’ll never solve. It’s like a word repeated too many times, until it loses all form and sense, just a noise in the ether. And yet, here we are, trying to understand it anyway, as if our lives depended on it. Perhaps that’s the only meaning that matters: the fact that we keep searching, not because we’re certain it exists, but because we’d rather not face the possibility that it doesn’t.
And if I’ve somehow managed to make any sense of this, then I must apologize, for I’ve clearly missed the point.