The Meaning Trap
Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the absurd
Ever find yourself reading Camus at 2 am, nodding along to his whole “life is absurd” thing, feeling intellectually superior about accepting the meaninglessness of existence?
And then the next morning you’re googling “what is my purpose” like some desperate bastard on a vision quest?
Welcome to the philosophical equivalent of standing in the doorway.
Not in, not out. Just blocking traffic.
You know what the pattern is?
We treat meaning like it’s binary. Either life has inherent cosmic significance or it’s all pointless chaos. Either there’s a grand design or we’re just atoms bumping into each other until we stop.
Pick a side, right?
Wrong.
Because that’s not actually the question that’s fucking with you.
What you’re really asking is: “Can I create my own meaning if there isn’t one baked into the universe?”
And the answer is yes, but it makes you uncomfortable because it means taking responsibility.
Much easier to either find the meaning (someone else’s job) or declare there isn’t one (also not your job).
Sartre had this whole thing about radical freedom. Basically, you’re “condemned to be free.”
Sounds dramatic, but what Jean-Paul was getting at is that having no predetermined meaning is terrifying precisely because it means you have to make the choices.
No cosmic instruction manual.
No customer service line to ring when you’re confused.
You know where it gets interesting?
You don’t actually want meaning handed to you. You’ve tried that.
Remember when you thought getting promoted would make everything make sense? Or finding the right relationship? Or moving to that dream city?
How’d that work out?
But you also don’t want to fully accept meaninglessness because that sounds like giving up.
Sounds like the kind of thing someone says right before they buy a sports car and start wearing leather jackets at 58.
The trick is recognizing that these aren’t opposing positions.
They’re the same thing viewed from different angles.
Life has no inherent meaning AND you get to create meaning. Both true. Simultaneously.
Like how light is both a particle and a wave, which sounds like physics bullshit but actually makes perfect sense once you stop trying to make it one or the other.
Camus understood this.
The whole Sisyphus thing isn’t about futility, it’s about ownership. You’re rolling the boulder up the hill either way.
The question is: are you going to be miserable about the cosmic joke, or are you going to own the absurdity and decide the rolling itself matters because you say it does?
I spent six years searching for the meaning of life in books, articles, and YouTube videos. Proper seeker mode.
And you know what I found?
Nothing that wasn’t already sitting in my own head.
The meaning was always “what do I care about right now?” Not what should I care about. Not what the universe wants me to care about.
What do I actually give a shit about?
Turns out, meaning is a verb, not a noun.
It’s something you do, not something you find. Like happiness or purpose or any of those other abstract concepts we treat like lost car keys.
The people who seem most content aren’t the ones who found the answer.
They’re the ones who stopped asking the question in its current form.
They’re not searching for meaning or accepting meaninglessness. They’re too busy making lunch, calling their mum, writing jokes, fixing things, building things, loving people. Just think about this for a second.
Which brings us back to you, standing in that doorway.
You can’t have it both ways, you think.
But you’re wrong.
You can absolutely have it both ways. No cosmic meaning. Your own meaning. Both. At the same time.
The universe doesn’t care what you do with your life, and that’s precisely why what you choose to do matters.
Stop treating this like a philosophy exam where you need the right answer.
There isn’t one. That’s the point.
That’s also the freedom.
Now get out of the fucking doorway. You’re letting the cold in.
Stay curious, stay skeptical.
Srini