The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

by Robert Pantano

In truth, no matter what we think we know, we are probably wrong, and no matter what anyone else thinks they know, they are probably wrong. No one knows what’s going on in any fundamental sense. Nothing about this life is simple or clear, and from the perspective of the stars, nothing down here on earth—including us—matters all that much to anything beyond itself. Paradoxically, in this, we find great opportunity for wisdom, humility, exploration, and profound experience in our lives. “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough,”

At the base of almost everything, the resulting truth is this: we don’t know. When we disregard this unknowingness, we can easily become disinterested, uninspired, and worn out of this life. We can put great stress on things that perhaps don’t matter all that much and neglect experiences and things that do. We can feel the pressure and anxiety of chasing perfection and certainty, which do not exist.

We should look to the universe often, not solely for answers but for perspective; for a helpful adjustment and an aerial consideration of our daily life. With this practice, the little things in life become more striking, the mistakes and the annoyances become less significant, the calm comes more easily, and the everyday activities of our lives that we so often view as wasteful and tedious reveal themselves to be wonderfully strange and curious parts of our existence that we should make effort to ponder and appreciate as often as we can.

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence,” said twentieth-century American-British philosopher Alan Watts. What a shame it would be to waste this experience by failing to appreciate the glory and magnificence found in the unknown.

At a very young age, life seems to be mostly candy, playgrounds, cartoon mice, and fun. The universe feels like it is made for us. Throughout childhood, things in popular culture like movies, TV shows, and advertising reinforce this hopeful optimism by selling us ideals of a life filled with easy friendships, love at first sight, exciting lifestyles, successful and fulfilling careers, and cool products that will all culminate in a perfect, smooth life. Of course, as we grow further past our youthful innocence, the world increasingly reveals itself to be far more complicated and convoluted. As we experience more of life, and we are continually disappointed by our optimism’s inability to align with the real conditions of the world, our optimism is beaten further and further into submission. At this point, the individual is often compelled to surrender any form of naïve optimism and replace it with some degree of pessimism. Arguably, any honestly examined life goes through this transition. At first, this might sound rather somber and bleak, and if we stop here, it very well can be. However, with the proper consideration, perhaps there is a way in which we can leverage this pessimism and use it to our advantage. Perhaps there is a way through pessimism that leads to an adapted and more reasonable optimism—not the sort of delusional optimism that is ignorant to the somber truths of our condition, but rather, an optimism that exists in spite of it all.

Would a game where the rules always work in the players favor even be a game at all? Of what interest would this be? What experience would there be to have? To give up on life entirely would be like refusing to play a game because we lose sometimes, as if the game would even be worth playing if we knew we were going to win every time we played. There is courage in facing the realities of pessimism and there is strength to be formed in its name. We must be pessimistic about life’s conditions in order to face their realities, but we must also be optimistic about our ability to face their realities and form strength, meaning, and experience through them.

Perhaps there are no ultimate answers in philosophy, perhaps there never will be, but there are no ultimate answers in music, in art, in a beautiful landscape, or in a conversation with a friend, and yet, I know of no one who does not find value, insight, love, and solace in all of these things.

Perhaps what we should and only can do is to try to enjoy the process of playing with the blocks of philosophy like children playing with toy blocks for no reason other than the curiosity and fun of it; not because in the end the blocks will provide something that stays up forever, but because we inevitably will take the blocks down, put them away for a little while, and then play with them again on another day, in a different way.

In other words, it involves living in accordance with one’s limitations to articulate and understand things in any absolute sense and living more off intuition and spontaneity. Paradoxically, in the attempt to define Zen, you have already incorrectly defined it. Alan Watts said that “Zen is trying to point to the physical universe so that you can look at it without forming ideas about it.” Instead of saying life is this or that, Zen says life is unclear and always changing, at least in terms of words and ideas. This is to say that the universe is not to be packaged or structured in some human or rational way, but rather, it is to be experienced from the perspective of a passenger, flowing with it, and avoiding attachment to things within it that might make one stuck or rigid.

a self-referential thinking that denies its ability to be a single, concrete, and universal thought that answers or understands what might exist beyond itself. Zen and the lesson of the kōans suggest that we should flow with life, ask questions, contemplate them, but not become tricked by any singular idea or answer that might tempt us into a final resolution. This is, of course, extremely difficult, especially since we tend to extract our identities out of our beliefs and ideas, and thus, our minds work very hard to hold onto them. Arguably, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to fully avoid being tricked by this function of the mind and ego. Even holding onto the idea of not holding onto any ideas is in fact holding onto an idea. However, perhaps by considering the lesson of the kōans, the more practical point is to help remind us of the playfulness of most things, see through the contrived, take ourselves a little less seriously, and open ourselves up to the likely paradox of all the ideas, experiences, and people we encounter. Just like how the center of a tornado is calm with little to no motion, despite it being surrounded by a coil of rapid, violent wind, we can live in the center of the tornado of knowing and unknowing and still remain calm and at ease.

Like the desire for perfect, unending happiness, the desire for complete and absolute freedom is impossible. But like happiness, it is, in its true, ultimate form, a state that comes and goes, unattainable in the ideal but attainable in the moment—in the moments when we surrender to the complete unified image of being, when we cease trying to square circles and placate everything that contests us, when we stop trying to escape what cannot be escaped.

When we persist with the belief that things outside of ourselves or things in the future will provide us with a form of ultimate happiness, we exchange the real moments of our lives for ones that do not exist.

we must strive for an acceptance and indifference to everything that happens, and instead, focus our attention on controlling our reactions to the things that happen. With this, we can begin to free ourselves from the chaos of the world and find some form of happiness and presence within ourselves.

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

Happiness in life, for Schopenhauer, is not a matter of joys and pleasures, but rather, the reduction of and freedom from pain as much as possible. “The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy,”

The overman is described as a sort of defiant, confident, independent individual who pursues their personal desires with vigor and dignifies their independent beliefs unapologetically; someone who deviates from the collective, exhibits strategic selfishness, and acts with aggressiveness and grandiosity.

Nietzsche sets up the overman to function as a sort of idealized version of oneself—an image of a perfect and powerful being who has overcome all their fears and deficiencies, which one can and should set goals to strive toward. Of course, as an ideal, it cannot ever truly be reached, but that is functionally the point.

“The world is the will to power—and nothing besides,” he wrote. And according to Nietzsche, this will to power is manifested in the desire for personal growth and satisfied in the pursuit of said growth. It is important to note here that his notion of power does not necessarily refer to physical strength nor power and dominance over others, but rather, power over oneself. Psychological and spiritual strength in the form of self-mastery and continuous growth represents the ultimate synchronization with the will to power for Nietzsche, and thus, the ultimate synchronization with life itself. The desire and striving toward the ideal of the overman serves as perpetual fuel for this process of self-growth as one works through a continuous cycle of self-dissatisfaction, self-improvement, and self-rediscovery, over and over. For Nietzsche, this process, which he would term self-overcoming, is fundamental to answering and resolving the problem of meaning and value in life. So long as one establishes one’s goals of growth in the name of what one deems to be an idealized, life-affirming version of themselves, the process transmutes the suffering of life into something worthwhile and personally redeemable—a sort of alchemy of the spirit that affirms life in the face of its inevitable suffering. “If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how,” Nietzsche wrote.

Unlike his primary predecessor, Arthur Schopenhauer, who proposed that suffering is best minimized and avoided to the best of one’s ability, Nietzsche argued that suffering is a good thing that should be leaned into, embraced, and used as fuel toward the amassing of strength and psychological power. Life is in fact inevitable suffering, and so, it is not a matter of if, but for what? “The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far,” Nietzsche wrote.

For Nietzsche, when referring to amor fati, he is arguably talking generally about the loving of one’s life. Understanding the nuance in Nietzsche’s use of the term love is important—it suggests more than a stoic acceptance, and instead, it connotes an almost enthusiastic and total adoration. It is a sentiment against the tendency to regret, to assume one could have retained more control over the outcomes and conditions of one’s reality, to have done differently, to have known any better, to have found that an existence void of particular negatives would have ultimately netted more positives. And instead, it is a declaration of love and embrace of all of life exactly how it is, with all the good and the bad, the success and the failure, the satisfaction and the pain. Nietzsche described it in this way: My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it. Naturally and understandably, we tend to find ourselves doing the opposite, deluded by the mirage of hindsight and wishful thinking. It appears as if there were options to have done differently, for things to have gone differently, to have been better. We regret what happens and yearn for otherness. In a theoretical sense, this may be true; there were potential different options to choose from in the past and different potential ways for things to go in the f...

It is not necessarily that life could have been different that is the problem, but that we resist finding the beauty in how it inevitably has gone. Resenting or fighting against what has happened to you or because of you only brings additional misery into the now, exasperating the problem and creating more to resent and resist. Like pouring the gasoline of regret onto a fire of unchangeable circumstances, we only unnecessarily intensify the flames. The true challenge and task of life, for Nietzsche, is to fall in love with what you are actually experiencing right now, as it is, in all the ways it is.

Amor fati is a sentiment of willingness to accept at last the way things have gone and will go, to love a life that tries in almost every moment to make you hate it, and to still stare back at it and say yes, I love it. What’s scarier than an opponent who smiles while being beaten?

When all the current reasons—moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on—no longer guide one’s life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy . . . Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books.

If we are not made with a specific purpose prior to existence, we create our purpose through our existence. In other words, through the choices we make and the actions we take in life, we create who we are and what life means.

Even choosing to not choose is still a choice. There is no escaping the requirements of choice. This is perhaps the fundamental existential choice: to choose or not to choose. In this choice, one either harnesses the anguish of human freedom or relinquishes it, either builds a life of intention or lives a life of complacency.

perhaps it is less about getting a potential course of life right and more about attempting to do so with self-honesty and virtue—to live a life that can be looked back on with the knowledge that some of our decisions were perhaps wrong in their effects but right in their intention

In the acceptance of our absurd human experience, we realize that the point is not to eliminate absurdity or find and defend some ultimate truth, but rather, it is to be conscious and appreciative of the things within the absurdity—to look for, find, and create things that are interesting and personally meaningful. Furthermore, Camus suggested that in recognizing our absurdity, we can better accept and share value with the people around us because we can understand that we are all struggling victims of the absurd.

There is a suffering and confusion a part of existence that we all know and feel yet seem to so often struggle to grant others. To not see the so obviously unobvious thing behind everything, to hate, to seek vengeance, to frequently act on anger, to declare certainty in almost anything, all contradict the very struggle and confusion of life that bring us so much pain in the first place. How often do we turn minor inconveniences into major ones due to this lack of consideration? Or worse yet, how often do we turn tragedies of random circumstance into tragedies of hatred?

Ultimately, there is a movement in this world with no one in the driver’s seat. Everyone is dealt different, complex hands of good and bad luck, all of which causes everyone to be who they are and aren’t. At bottom, no one chooses who they are born as, and no one chooses everything that happens thereafter, but ultimately, everything forms what one is. In the words of Schopenhauer, “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”

As a consciousness in the form that we are born into, we are all put up against the imperative of our mind’s desire for absolute truth, while simultaneously living in a world that prohibits us from obtaining it.

if we realize that the world has not singled us out, that most people are good people trying their best, that ignorance is far more often behind the curtain and not malice, that our emotions are not the result of being made victims by others but by us not taking ownership of them ourselves, that life is inherently difficult and suffering is fundamental to everyone, we can perhaps more accurately evaluate if what we are angered by is worthy of being angry about, and how.

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am,”

Emerson also asserted that nature is in a constant state of flux, and that we must live in synchronization with its process, trusting our own intuition and flowing with the changing self. In order to do this, we must not hold ourselves to ideas, beliefs, or traditions of the past, including our own. Rather, Emerson suggested that our state is subject to change, and consequently, that we might feel or think one way today, but the opposite way tomorrow. Instead of fighting this, however, Emerson argued that we must lean into it. “No man,” he wrote, “can antedate his experience or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw today the face of a person whom he shall see tomorrow for the first time.” In other words, no one can know what life will be like tomorrow nor what such life may cause one to think or

man’s task,” he wrote, “is . . .to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious . . . As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

For Jung, there is a constant interplay between the unconscious and conscious realms of the psyche, which combine to create our complete personality. Most of this, however, develops and exists in the unconscious realm, beneath our immediate awareness and control. Thus, a significant portion of who we really are, what we really like and are capable of, and the reasons we do the things we do, persist within a realm we don’t actively understand or have access to. And so, in order to come into a more authentic and complete state of being, the individual must attempt to make this portion of the psyche conscious by tapping into it and integrating it into the whole of their awareness.

the self, or the combined, authentic totality of the unconscious and conscious. This self is who the individual actually is, what they actually desire, what they actually like, what they actually are capable of, and so on. Simply put, getting the ego and the persona as close to this as possible is the goal of individuation and, ultimately, a fulfilled life.

In all cases, this sort of self-realization requires an effort of radical self-acceptance; and radical self-acceptance requires an effort of radical self-honesty. In order to actively move deeper into the psyche, each time one examines a personal feeling, thought, or action, one must attempt to do so by accepting the complete and potentially undesirable truth of what it indicates about them—that they are not always who they think or hope they are.

Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The Shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist.

man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it.

it is not purely hopeless. What he offered, rather, was an alternative kind of heroism characterized by a sort of honesty about one’s condition: living with an intense humility and positive resignation to the awe, mystery, and chaos of the universe and our insignificant position within it. This position—the absurdity of life and being made victim by our own death—can be framed in a way that does not deny it, but rather, provides perspective—honest perspective that can reduce one’s concerns over the petty and trivial.

you will die, but you are alive now.

To fully enjoy the present moment as often as you can and in as many ways as you can, to fall in love with a person, a thing, a moment, yourself, to make the most of everything despite knowing that you will lose it all to nothing, is more than enough heroism.

If there is nothing specific to be done, the only thing that truly matters is that we do what matters to us while we can. There is nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. We must charge headlong into the absurdity, embrace the futility, and live hard for nothing in every moment.

In the words of Alan Watts: So in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it’s your reality, then how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of you being scared and put out and worried and so on is just nothing. It’s a dream. Because you’re really nothing. But this is the most incredible nothing. So, cheer up! You see?

When we are tuned into this nothingness of being and truly confront it as a potential part of everything, it could and likely should be followed with a deep recognition of the thin temporariness coated over everything, and thus, the importance of focusing, not on some endgame, but on the very real implications that there are no endgames. The ever-fleeting present is all there is, filtered through us at the intersection of the mystical oneness of all things and nothing. And perhaps, as such, we should try our best to be careful of what we take seriously, and what we don’t.

If we are to be fully human and fully alive and aware, it seems that we must be willing to suffer for our pleasures. Without such willingness, there can be no growth in the intensity of consciousness . . . to strive for pleasure to the exclusion of pain is, in effect, to strive for the loss of consciousness. Alan Watts

the more one tries to remove or escape the negative experience of life, the more negative it becomes. Rather, the more one faces it willingly and intentionally, the stronger and more equipped one becomes—the more meaningful and positive the pain and hardship can be made to feel.

if the pain and endurance of working through the process does not feel worth it, and you are not compelled to do it even in the face of rejection, hardship, or sacrifice, it is here where Bukowski might say don’t try. But if it does, if the thought of not doing the thing hurts more than the thought of potentially suffering through the process of it, if the thought of a life without it or never having tried it at all terrifies you, if it comes to you, through you, out of you, almost as if you’re not trying, perhaps Bukowski might say try, and “if you’re going to try, go all the way.”