If You Struggle To Find Meaning In Your Life, Watch This

Does consciousness die with the body, and is meaning doomed like the universe? Well, I don't know. I would say, I mean, we don't understand consciousness; we don't really understand its place in the cosmos, let's say. But I'm not qualified to answer such questions. I would say though that, you know, no one stops listening to a symphony because they know it's going to end.

So, I think in some sense our proper task is to find the meaning within the finite. When I had clinical clients who were consumed with such questions, because, you know, you can pick a time frame of evaluation that makes all your efforts futile. Right? Well, the sun is going to envelop the earth, I think it's four billion years, so like, get ready. It's like, well, what's the point of stopping this baby from crying when the sun is going to envelop the earth?

And for well, yeah, you all laugh, right? But that laughter, you see, that's a sign of wisdom. You know, that's preposterous. Why? I mean, that's the existential question, right? It's like, well, if we're all doomed to ashes and decay, why do anything? Well, I used the baby crying for a reason. I mean, who in the world is going to use that argument to not feed their baby? Well, why feed that thing? In four billion years the sun's going to develop the earth.

It's like, wrong time frame folks. And so what I would say, and I did say to my clinical clients, if you're adopting a time frame that makes what you're doing appear trivial, the problem isn't necessarily what you're doing, although it might be, and you have to ask yourself that question because perhaps you are engaging in something that's more trivial than you should be. The problem is that your mind, which is capable of leaping across evaluative frameworks, has picked a time frame inappropriate for the task.

So quit doing that. Instead, you could say, well, why don't you practice adopting the time frame that imbues your properly oriented action with the deepest possible apprehended meaning? And why would you not think that the fact that that meaning manifests itself with the proper choice of time frame, why wouldn't you accept the fact that's indication of a valid choice? It certainly feels like it. You know what it's like? You get engaged in something—a deep conversation, a piece of music, a piece of art, something you love doing, someone you love being with.

You get engaged in that, you lose your sense of temporality, and you don't pop out of it and think, "Oh my God, I wish I would use the time frame that made everything irrelevant because of my cognitive brilliance." You think, "Hey, we could do that some more. Like, how about all the time?" And that's a good goal. It's like, yeah, how about that all the time? And then you've got time, right? When you're engaged like that.

And I would say that's a profound neurophysiological signal that you're in the right place at the right time. Right? Because it's accompanied by a sense of deep well-being, and that's literally an antidote to suffering. I mean that literally. With many of my clients, who were suffering, what we would strive to do was not so much make them happy, because sometimes that was impossible—they were so crippled in so many ways, often physically and in pain—but something meaningful that would keep them going and keep them from straying and keep them from thinking homicidal and genocidal thoughts. All of that.

And meaning, that's the antidote to suffering. The question is, well, how's that best to be found? Well, that's an empirical question. You have to look in your own life and see where meaning glimmers and then pursue that. Right? That's what Harry Potter is doing, by the way, when he's chasing the snitch. I just thought I'd let you know. And you know, you win the game if you catch that thing; well, that's not exactly right, you get 100 points, but you know, it'll do.

So another question, how about you? Hi, thank you very much for the lecture. Um, you talked a lot about meaning, both from perception and in music and art. What do you mean by meaning? What is meaning, and where is its source? Meaning is implication for action or for reorganization of the perceptual frames that frame action.

So there is… and is that the sole aim of what you— is that what you find in art and music? Yes, in complex ways. I mean, in music you find this demand that the music lays upon you to orient yourself in relationship to this harmonious interplay of patterns. And you might say, well, why is that meaningful? Well that's a good question. Well, it's because you're acting out something like the adaptation of your soul to the structures of reality itself.

Now, it's done very abstractly because the patterns of music are not precisely the actual patterns of the world, right? They're abstractions, but it's play and representation, and it's art. And so you're acting out the process of optimal adaptation at a very high level. When you think what people are doing... imagine a Viennese waltz. You know, so you have this unbelievably well-trained orchestra, they're all emitting patterns like mad, and they're playing while they're doing that, putting little twists on the patterns so that they're a little novel, a little interesting, even if you've heard the music many times.

You have the conductor who's keeping all these specialized subsections operating in harmony, and then you have the couples dancing, and they're trained to do that, but they're cutting the rug. You know, in the same way, they have their moves and they're trying to impress each other, and there's a mating aspect of that. They're all doing that harmoniously, and it's a complete vision of an ordered society—right?—from the subatomic realm, let's say, all the way up to the cosmic realm. That's all taking place in the dance.

And people don't know that, but well, they do know it too, you know? And they know it in that they're acting it out. And there isn't anything, in some sense, that you know more deeply or believe more deeply than that which you act out. And you're not smart enough to understand the full totality of your actions. I mean, we're not transparent to ourselves; we act out all sorts of things that are stunningly brilliant without realizing it.

And it takes, in some sense, often untold centuries for us to figure out what we were doing and why. And so that happens to you, you know, in your own life when you have a flash of insight into your own behavior. That's why I was doing that. It's like, while you were doing it, why didn't you know? Well, you're complicated. You're really complicated and certainly not transparent to yourself.

And so I have a paper called "Three Types of Meaning," you could look that up if you wanted a more technical answer. But the music answer, by example, is a good one, and I think people can really relate to it because, you know, the only person you ever hear who says, "Well, I don't really like music," is like, no, that's just a posture. You know? You like music; you just want to be, you know, kind of interestingly different and controversial.

And it's really something, right? And it's also interesting that music has this non-propositional structure that's completely opaque to rational argumentation. You know, I said I used to like to watch punk rockers—yeah, especially the ones who did mosh pit punk rock. And you know, I went to a Ramones concert once. It was quite comical; I was on the second floor. Ah, so loud I couldn't hear for three days after this concert because it was a pretty little theater, we sat about 800 people, and they had their stadium speakers in there. It was like a sonic wall of sound, and we were above this mosh pit.

And there were all these nihilistic punk rockers down there smashing into each other and throwing themselves off the stage, and I thought, for all this talk of nihilism, there you are dancing to the harmonious patterns of life! It's like, you know, smash the state and all of that; it’s like, that will groove to that. Yeah, it's very comical. So even among the most propositionally nihilistic, they still fall in love with music. It might be harsh and grating to some ears, but you start where you can, and you know, I like the Ramones, so that was fine with me.

So maybe, yes.