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I am 42, single, similar situation. I was in a pretty dark place around 38 or so. I happened to read "man's search for meaning" by victor frankl and it honestly

I am 42, single, similar situation. I was in a pretty dark place around 38 or so. I happened to read "man's search for meaning" by victor frankl and it honestly helped A LOT. When we are young and nature is working for our benefit, we should search for happiness. Beyond that, we need to search for meaning. There are 2 meanings implicit and third one you can pursue. 1) Search for meaning is meaningful itself. 2) Human life has intrinsic meaning. I dont agree with nihilism that life has no meaning. Life has no 'given' meaning - correct. But since we are conscious, there is a living being going through experiences, there is intrinsic meaning to human life. Consciousness gives meaning to everything. In absence of consciousness, nothing has meaning. This intrinsic meaning is irrespective of life success. Even for a complete failure, since a real living being went through this life, the life still has meaning. 3) External meaning. This is related to success happiness relationships helping others etc. This is a bit fragile, since if you lose these things then you lose meaning. And if you are not successful, life might feel meaningless. A healthy life is a balance of pursuing external meaning and accepting and giving value to internal meaning. It is not happiness vs meaning. happiness is one of the things that gives meaning to human life. Wish you all the best.

flybrand 4y ago
Frankl is a great place to start.
- soheil 4y ago
  No a psychiatrist is. Stop wasting people's time and put them in more danger than they already are.
  - dubeye 4y ago
    Speaking as someone who has done both, you are wrong, it's a great place to start
murat124 4y ago
There are many answers to what is the meaning of life. Lacking some important aspects of life like family, career, etc. because of past decisions, or losing someone dear may put anyone in a situation where they question the very meaning of life and even when things are all fine we look for a purpose to make sense of things around us. Some philosophers look at this question and argue for passion, some inner peace. Frankl says one needs to seek their own meaning of life. Find whatever it is, make it meaningful for you and hold on to it. If you are in a dark place do yourself a solid and try reading Frankl's book mentioned by OP. Reading about Montaigne's life (there's a recent bio book about him) may also help. Seneca's or Marcus Aurelius's writings will also help when it particularly comes to the issue of how worrying too much about things we can't control affects us. Every living breathing soul has their own demons and issues with life, you have yours so most importantly go easy on yourself.
xylophile 4y ago
Another bit of recommended reading is The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. I had read Frankl years prior, and while he helped me thoroughly understand the concept of meaning and the immense value of it, he didn't help me find it when I needed it. All of his suggested paths felt a bit wishful or self-deceptive. Absurdism was the only conversation that felt like it was grappling with the problem directly and unadorned.
- biinui 4y ago
  May you give a gist on The Myth of Sisyphus? :D
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
> Life has no 'given' meaning Careful [0]. The conclusion that life is meaningless as such is what follows from materialism by necessity. What is often unappreciated is that bad metaphysics leads to bad ideas, in this case that life is meaningless. And why is materialism at fault? Because it denies telos. Without telos, life is, indeed and quite literally, meaningless. But why should that trouble us if we, the world, all of it, were as the materialists say it is? Needs don't exist in a materialist universe because need implies telos (a need is always for the sake of something), and we suffer when needs aren't met, so where is this suffering about there not being any meaning in the first place coming from? So clearly, telos is real and materialism is, for this and other reasons, wrong. Otherwise, it makes no difference how you live, or even whether you live or die. Why should it bother you? It's all meaningless! Another source of "meaninglessness" is moral in nature, specifically, that somewhere in our lives we pridefully rejected meaning because it opposed something illicit we wanted to do. Telos is the basis of morality, after all. This is something Aldous Huxley has written about. To quote him[1]: “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.” Now, this sort of stuff about "consciousness" is like an existentialist opiate that temporarily soothes the pain of half-baked nihilism, but it is fragile b/c it is incoherent. Everything is meaningless, but I can invent meaning ex nihilo b/c "consciousness"? It sounds like we've quietly retreated from materialism into some kind of strange dualism where everything is meaningless but somehow "consciousness" is now pregnant with meaning. This may be the cunning of reason, leading us back slowly to the telos of human nature through a series of metaphysical halfway houses. That's the theory. Practically speaking, people say one thing, but implicitly mean something else (materialists don't believe materialism with any real integrity because it is impossible). So when you say that "consciousness" gives meaning, you may in practice simply mean "This is the meaning I perceive" which may very well be the objective meaning. Or, it could be a way of maintaining one's refusal to conform to objective meaning and therefore objective moral duties by retreating into the virtual reality of subjectivism (this never ends well). > happiness is one of the things that gives meaning to human life. This is exactly backwards. Happiness is the result of satisfying the end(s) of human nature. Happiness is teleological and therefore presupposes meaning, not the other way around. Of course, we are not guaranteed complete happiness in this life, but Kant, in a stoically severe bit of insight, said we nonetheless ought to strive to be deserving of happiness. This is the life of virtue. [0] https://thomism.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/meaning-simpliciter-and-secundum-quid/ https://thomism.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/meaning-simpliciter... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/465563-i-had-motives-for-not-wanting-the-world-to-have https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/465563-i-had-motives-for-no...

flybrand 4y ago

Frankl is a great place to start.

soheil 4y ago
No a psychiatrist is. Stop wasting people's time and put them in more danger than they already are.
- dubeye 4y ago
  Speaking as someone who has done both, you are wrong, it's a great place to start

murat124 4y ago

There are many answers to what is the meaning of life. Lacking some important aspects of life like family, career, etc. because of past decisions, or losing someone dear may put anyone in a situation where they question the very meaning of life and even when things are all fine we look for a purpose to make sense of things around us. Some philosophers look at this question and argue for passion, some inner peace. Frankl says one needs to seek their own meaning of life. Find whatever it is, make it meaningful for you and hold on to it. If you are in a dark place do yourself a solid and try reading Frankl's book mentioned by OP. Reading about Montaigne's life (there's a recent bio book about him) may also help. Seneca's or Marcus Aurelius's writings will also help when it particularly comes to the issue of how worrying too much about things we can't control affects us. Every living breathing soul has their own demons and issues with life, you have yours so most importantly go easy on yourself.

xylophile 4y ago

Another bit of recommended reading is The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. I had read Frankl years prior, and while he helped me thoroughly understand the concept of meaning and the immense value of it, he didn't help me find it when I needed it. All of his suggested paths felt a bit wishful or self-deceptive. Absurdism was the only conversation that felt like it was grappling with the problem directly and unadorned.

biinui 4y ago
May you give a gist on The Myth of Sisyphus? :D

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

> Life has no 'given' meaning Careful [0]. The conclusion that life is meaningless as such is what follows from materialism by necessity. What is often unappreciated is that bad metaphysics leads to bad ideas, in this case that life is meaningless. And why is materialism at fault? Because it denies telos. Without telos, life is, indeed and quite literally, meaningless. But why should that trouble us if we, the world, all of it, were as the materialists say it is? Needs don't exist in a materialist universe because need implies telos (a need is always for the sake of something), and we suffer when needs aren't met, so where is this suffering about there not being any meaning in the first place coming from? So clearly, telos is real and materialism is, for this and other reasons, wrong. Otherwise, it makes no difference how you live, or even whether you live or die. Why should it bother you? It's all meaningless! Another source of "meaninglessness" is moral in nature, specifically, that somewhere in our lives we pridefully rejected meaning because it opposed something illicit we wanted to do. Telos is the basis of morality, after all. This is something Aldous Huxley has written about. To quote him[1]: “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.” Now, this sort of stuff about "consciousness" is like an existentialist opiate that temporarily soothes the pain of half-baked nihilism, but it is fragile b/c it is incoherent. Everything is meaningless, but I can invent meaning ex nihilo b/c "consciousness"? It sounds like we've quietly retreated from materialism into some kind of strange dualism where everything is meaningless but somehow "consciousness" is now pregnant with meaning. This may be the cunning of reason, leading us back slowly to the telos of human nature through a series of metaphysical halfway houses. That's the theory. Practically speaking, people say one thing, but implicitly mean something else (materialists don't believe materialism with any real integrity because it is impossible). So when you say that "consciousness" gives meaning, you may in practice simply mean "This is the meaning I perceive" which may very well be the objective meaning. Or, it could be a way of maintaining one's refusal to conform to objective meaning and therefore objective moral duties by retreating into the virtual reality of subjectivism (this never ends well). > happiness is one of the things that gives meaning to human life. This is exactly backwards. Happiness is the result of satisfying the end(s) of human nature. Happiness is teleological and therefore presupposes meaning, not the other way around. Of course, we are not guaranteed complete happiness in this life, but Kant, in a stoically severe bit of insight, said we nonetheless ought to strive to be deserving of happiness. This is the life of virtue. [0] https://thomism.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/meaning-simpliciter-and-secundum-quid/ https://thomism.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/meaning-simpliciter... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/465563-i-had-motives-for-not-wanting-the-world-to-have https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/465563-i-had-motives-for-no...