The Pursuit of Meaning

Finding meaning in the modern world

So many blame the world around us for the ills of society. It’s the world’s fault for where I am in life. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for “the others” who put me here. What is the world but a series of people just like yourself who blame their circumstances on “the others.” How can one come to terms with their own flaws and work to improve them when they don’t accept the responsibility for their own actions. To blame the world is to deny your part in it. We all are part of this world, but until each and every one of us can focus on ourselves, it will continue to a lesser world.

For many years, I blamed my circumstances on externalities. You could say it was even true in many ways. My genetics, my environment, my socio-economic class — all of these things contributed to my experience in life. I was the victim of the world, powerless to change because I gave all blame to the external. But I’ve recently realized that this way of belief is crippling. It held me down in the times I needed to stand up. When I stopped projecting blame for where I was in life on the world, I began to see within myself the traits, patterns, and behaviors that held me back.

I was not a victim of the world, I was a victim of myself. The circumstances of the world around me was the crutch I used to prevent myself from growing, from improving, from taking control. Destiny is not something given to you. It’s something you take. It’s not at the end of some heroic journey, not a prize awarded by another, not a gift from a goddess — it is within us. You take control of your destiny the moment you face yourself and accept the blame. It sometimes takes place in a single moment or sometimes over years of hard work.

It took me too long to realize this. Yet this knowledge has been with us for millenniums. Our ancestors wrote down this wisdom in ancient texts. From the biblical to the Greek philosophers, from Rome to India, those who came before us tried to pass it down. And as I realized the truth behind this revelation, I wondered why our society does not openly discuss these things. Some sects and groups do, but this wisdom largely sits in the shadows.

Is it that our journey into reason has clouded our understanding of how vital internal development is? Reason has turned our eyes from within to without. We observe what we see and deny what is hidden — until we can somehow bring it to light. But again, we rely on others to do this. We rely on science, or experts, to enlighten us — we are again playing the victim. Whether we are blaming the world for our problems or waiting around for someone to tell us how to be better, we are denying our worth.

The great irony of science is that as we’ve learned more about the world around us, we have forgotten the world within. In defining the laws of the universe, we have diminished our belief in ourselves. We look out at the stars, the galaxies, the vastness of it all, and think of ourselves as insignificant in the grand scheme of things. That is a lie. We have more power than we give ourselves credit for. But right now, we are at a moment of transition.

We have thrown away much of the philosophy and metaphysics of the past and have replaced it with nothing. Science has not yet uncovered the greatest secrets of the universe and our place within it, but our observational view of nature has left a void that we are told we can’t fill ourselves. The wisdom of the past is refuted, and science will have the answers in time. But for now, we must wait. The discovery will come. Science will be able to derive meaning from data and observation — only it cannot.

Meaning is not found in data. It is not found in objective reality. It will not be mined by the sciences. Meaning is subjective and cannot be quantified. You find your meaning in life. You grasp your destiny. You take action and affect the world around you.

We are told the world is causal. Therefore, we are viewed as insignificant effects in a long chain of causality. Some have the strength of will to force action and change things, but most people do not. It’s easier to believe the statistics and say “well, X percent of people in my demographic have this issue. I am just an effect”. This is self-fulfilling.

The only way to liberate us from the ills of society, and to transform it, is to stop believing that we are insignificant. We must stop attributing meaning and value to data and statistics. Meaning will never be objective, and if people claim it is, they are lying. So if we can’t rely on science for meaning and cannot remain the victims of externalities, what then can we do?

We take our power back. We face what holds us back — ourselves. We stop letting the world dictate our actions and transform our world one individual at a time. To do this, we must reject collective victimhood, stop relying on science and data to find meaning for us, and take responsibility for our own lives. That is where an almost limitless power of change and transformation will come from. We all can live up to our potential, which far exceeds what anyone can imagine, but we must do it for ourselves.

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