Life is Empty and Meaningless

The search for meaning seems to be woven into our human nature. We crave it. Among all of known creation, we humans alone seem to have been endowed with self-consciousness, logic, and free will. Surely, we think, there must be some purpose for which we were intended to apply these gifts. So it’s not surprising we are loathe to consider one seemingly terrifying possibility… that there simply is no inherent meaning of life. 

“Life is empty and meaningless.  And it is empty and meaningless that life is empty and meaningless.”  

Werner Erhard

Sounds hopeless, right? That is because you are focused on the first sentence, that “Life is empty and meaningless.”  You are making it mean something and taking it personally.  You are applying your negative preconceptions of the words “empty” and “meaningless”. Don’t. Set aside those preconceptions and read the statement again on it’s own merit, with extra focus on the second sentence, “It is empty and meaningless that life is empty and meaningless.”

While initially this may sound like a pessimistic outlook, quite the opposite is intended.  This is a statement brimming with optimism, and leaving open the potential for infinite possibilities.  It implies that life has no inherent meaning, except the meaning that we ascribe to it. 

Put another way, life is a blank book and we are free to do with it as we please.  We can fill its pages with inspired poetry or a hateful manifesto. We can create silly doodles or intricate works of art. Or tear out the pages to fold into wonderfully complex origami or simple paper airplanes. We can shoot spitballs, or wad up the pages to toss one by one into the garbage bin. Or we can set it aflame and burn the whole book to ashes.

Life is Empty

The emptiness of life is what allows us to create. As Lao Tzu stated in the Tao Te Ching, “Clay is shaped into a bowl, but it is the empty space that makes it useful.” Without the empty space, there is no bowl, just a lump of clay.  And the bowl can only be useful when it is empty. A bowl already filled is of no further use. There is no room for anything else unless we first empty it.  Life is the same way.  

To create a life worthy of ourselves, we must first empty it of all our baggage, our past, our mistaken notions and stories that we’ve been putting in the bowl our entire lives. If we recognize and accept the inherent emptiness of life and of ourselves, then creation of something new becomes possible. But we cannot create out of “somethingness”, because “something” will always get in the way. We can only create out of nothingness. So get empty!

Life is Meaningless

The meaninglessness of life provides us the opportunity to create our own meaning.  Most people do not sit down one day and make a deliberate and conscious choice about the meaning they will ascribe to life. Many have never even considered that ascribing their own meaning to life is an option, rather waiting for such meaning and purpose to be revealed to them by God or assigned by society at large.  And it is my contention that the majority of these people continue waiting their whole lives for an answer, and then die having never discovered the meaning of life. They did not know it was within them the whole time. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We do not have to wait or search for meaning from an external source.  We won’t find it there.  If we approach life as a blank book, empty and meaningless, then the possibilities are endless and entirely up to us.

“Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.”

-Joseph Campbell

Stop looking “out there” for meaning and start creating it.

Remember:

• Life is empty, and that is a wonderful opportunity.  Empty yourself of anything that is not serving you.  Once you are empty, there is room for creation of every possibility.

• Life is meaningless, except for the meaning we ascribe to it.  So choose wisely.