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

by Robert Pantano

“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.