🌀🐇 #42 The Meaning of Life Edition

​ ​ ​ ⚡️ Enlightening Bolts Welcome to Issue #42: The Meaning of Life Edition. We've collected a variety of resources, quotes, and insights exploring the nature of meaning. 🎹You Play The Piano: This reverie from Alan Watts explores how the meaning of life is less like traveling and more like listening to music. [Read it here.](​ 👁 The Meaning Crisis: A HighExistence podcast with Jon Vervaeke who gained popularity for his Awakening From The Meaning Crisis lecture series. In this episode, we explore an exhaustive summary of the meaning crisis, strengths and weaknesses of Eastern and Western spiritual approaches, the pros and cons of a scientific mindset, and much more. [Listen here.](=)​ 🤯How To Live A Meaningful Life: Daniel Schmachtenberger outlines 3 steps to live a meaningful life: Appreciate the beauty of existence, add to the beauty of existence, and increase your ability to appreciate and add to the beauty of existence. [Read more here.](​ Did someone forward you this email? Get this newsletter every week when you [sign up here.](​ 🎇 Image of The Week ​ This is a depiction of the Mandelbrot set. It's a fractal which means it displays similar patterns at different levels of magnification. I am including it in this issue because I see a fractal nature to our interpretation of meaning. There are patterns of meaning to be viewed zoomed out to the sprawling history of our species, zoomed in to the scale of an individual life, further in to the razor edge of this present moment, and everywhere in between. 🔮 The Ultimate Answer In the acclaimed science fiction tome, A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, it’s revealed by the deep thought computer that “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” is 42. There are different explanations for why this is the answer provided but let me tell you my interpretation. The answer 42 is fundamentally unsatisfying. In truth, any good answer seeking to encompass the depth and breadth of meaning in life would need to leave a lot left to be imagined. Words are incapable of wrangling the mystery and vastness of reality. And I think it’s a good thing that the answer is unfulfilling because it leaves open the hunger for meaning itself rather than the pursuit of an answer about meaning. Rather than leaving the one who asked with a feeling of completeness upon encountering an answer, we’re pushed to let go of our abstract striving so we can LIVE into the answers. This sentiment is not unlike Rainer Maria Rilke’s notion: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Treading along similar ground, Joseph Campbell said "Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” It’s also related to a sense of “openture” that I shared in [last week's issue](. Rather than seeking closure or finality, we live into the open-endedness of things. Our experience of meaning is never complete and and the rivers of meaning from which we can drink are never dry. From this perspective, we can shift our focus from searching for some abstract answer that fits into a simple sentence and be more focused on the experience of meaning as it washes through our world in its endless configurations. 💡 Supply Our Own Light Sink your mind into this fierce quote from Stanley Kubrick: "The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre (a keen enjoyment of living), their idealism — and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong — and lucky — he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan (enthusiastic and assured vigor and liveliness). Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." 🤓 Learn This Word Meaningness: the quality of being meaningful and/or meaningless. The originator of this term, David Chapman, has developed an entire "hypertext" book exploring the nature of meaning which can be [read for free here.](​ ⏳ From The Archives A hand-picked classic HighExistence article. ​[The Ridiculously Obvious Meaning Of Life]()​ There’s an interesting movement underway in society right now: the pursuit of immortality. Everyone wants to live forever, or at least as long as possible. To extend our lifespan to as many days and moments as we can. In the buffet of life, we want it all. But oddly, we are constantly bored by life. We are all addicts of “distraction.” It’s hard not to see a contradiction. Why would a culture that cannot find value in individual moments want to live as long as possible? A fundamental recognition is missing… If you cannot find meaning and fulfillment on a moment-to-moment basis in your life right now, you never will, regardless of how long you live. In fact, the meaning of your life increases because of the fact that it is so short. You are the brief flickering of a firefly in the night sky — make that flicker count. ​[Continue Reading]()​ 🎬 Endnote We hope you enjoyed this issue of Down The Rabbit Hole. Feel free to reply and tell us what you think. Want to help us spread the word? We love sharing these gems of wisdom and wonder with you each week. If you love receiving them and want to help us spread the word, here is one quick way you can do that: Forward this email to one friend. That's it. 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