The Pursuit of Meaning in a Meaningless World

Does life have any meaning at all? This question plagued the greatest philosophers of our times and weighs on our minds now, more than ever, with the global uncertainty we face today of political tensions, climate change, and constant threats of nuclear annihilation. In a seemingly meaningless world, we are tasked with creating meaning ourselves. French philosopher Albert Camus viewed the universe as absurd and inherently meaningless. Camus was not saying that life has no meaning and that there is no point in living; he was saying that if there is an innate meaning of the universe, humans cannot perceive it. Meaning must be constructed by ourselves. Each person gives their life meaning. In the world today, most of us unconsciously strive for perfection without knowing it. Even when we get what we want and lead a life full of achievements and outward success, there still lies a certain longing, an emptiness. For Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, this was the case. Tolstoy was an acclaimed novelist, a wealthy man who lived on a large estate and had a large family, but something was missing in his later years. When he was around 50, he fell into a spiritual mid-life crisis and contemplated suicide. He felt incomplete and needed a reason to go on living. 

If it is true that life has no inherent meaning, then we must create it ourselves. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus argues that if life were inherently meaningful, we would know and not feel compelled to search for an answer. He uses the example of suicide to prove his point. People would not feel compelled to take their lives if they knew their lives were meaningful. But because this is not the case, people do commit suicide, and look for a way out of the absurdity. The meaning of life is an instilled question that burns in us, awakening during times of suffering. The suffering, then, is what calls us to search our psychological depths to find a way of living that feels appropriate to who we are. Camus continues by saying that before doing anything worthwhile in this world, one needs to know why one is doing that. What is the reason for it? If he can’t understand his suffering, his toil, his labor, and has no clarity, he feels like a foreigner in a foreign land. 

Mechanical, routine ways of living lead us to get caught in a half-lived life. Joseph Campbell called this the provisional life. The provisional life leads to despair, leading one to awaken to something within their being that calls them to a more meaningful orientation towards life. Something in us can not accept any more meaningless suffering. We get restless, and some other creative life force energy tries to burst through our consciousness to tell us there is more to do here than just exist to perform robotic tasks that don’t fulfill our soul. Camus labels this as a weariness that kicks into one's life. “Weariness comes at the end of the mechanical life, but at the same time, it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return into the chain, or it is the definitive awakening. At the end of the awakening comes, in time, the consequence; suicide or recovery.” (Camus). Is the call to suicide to be taken literally, or is it symbolically telling us that something in us needs to die and be transformed to go on living a life that is true to who we are at our core?

A person must unify the mind with the matter around and within himself. This is a person’s solution to making any type of compromise with the absurd. Camus says, “Mind’s deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man’s unconscious feeling in the face of his universe; It is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity.” (Camus). Camus is saying here that we don’t know an ultimate reality, but we do see a reality inside of us that exists by living it out in the world. In other words, reality can only be understood by the reduction of our own thoughts. Camus suggests that fate assumes your meaning; you are given a set of circumstances, and you ultimately end up where you do, which is beyond your control. It is up to us to decide how to respond to that fate. What attitude do we take towards it? Will we engage with this unconscious material that is living through us, or will we remain ignorant of it and let it direct our lives until the day we die?

The Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, believes that not what one does with their life matters, but what they choose to put their faith in. Tolstoy was a famous writer and the owner of a large estate. His beautiful, loving family and great neighbors admired and respected him, and he would be one of the world’s most renowned authors ever. He virtually had everything a man dreams of attaining in a single lifetime. However, he grew miserable later on in life. He could not figure out why it was necessary to do the things he wanted to do, since he would inevitably die like everyone he loved. Tolstoy states, “Before attending to my Samara Estate, to my son’s education, or to the writing of a book, I ought to know why I should do that.” (Tolstoy). It wasn’t the what or the how that conflicted Tolstoy; it was the “why” he could not understand. He needed the “why” to continue living. 

Tolstoy admits that he felt emptiness. He could go on eating, breathing, and sleeping, but he could not understand why he should go on working and living for himself and his family if they were all going to die and be forgotten in the end. In his book, Confession, Tolstoy writes, “I know everything that science wants so much to know, but this path will not lead me to an answer to the question of the meaning of my life. In the realm of speculative science, I saw that in spite of -or rather precisely because of-the fact that this knowledge was designed to answer my question, there could be no answer other than the one I had given myself: What is the meaning of my life? It has none. Or: What will come of my life? Nothing. Or: Why does everything that exists, and why do I exist? Because it exists.” (Tolstoy, 41). Tolstoy explains how science can only answer what something is in relation to something else, but it can’t tell us why it is that way, why we’re here, and what we are. 

Science cannot answer the meaning of existence. Science can tell you what and how, but it can’t give you the meaning of life. Science can tell you what an atom is and how you are made up of these particles, and the Universe too, is made up of identical particles. And the sun gives life to everything on the planet. Mathematics can tell us about probability and relativity through equations. And we know what gravity is and how it works. Philosophy can hint at what life is, and tell you about ethics and morals, as well as the nature of existence. But all of these fields have one thing in common: they can not give you an adequate reason to live. 

The dragon must be confronted and slain. In hero myths, dragons represent our fears and insecurities that guard the doors to a new and vitalizing life adventure. They keep us in the illusion of comfort and safety, preventing us from finding the treasure. The dragon must be faced; in other words, the darkness inside us that we’ve locked away is the dragon and needs to be confronted. Tolstoy referred to an old Eastern Fable of an old traveler chased into a well by a wild beast. “Trying to save himself from the beast, the traveler jumps into a dried-up well, but at the bottom of the well, he sees a dragon with its jaws open wide, waiting to devour him. The unhappy man does not dare climb out for fear of being killed by the wild beast, and he does not dare jump to the bottom of the well for fear of being devoured by the dragon. So he grabs hold of a branch of a wild bush growing in the crevices of the well and clings to it.” (Tolstoy, 30). Two mice, one black and one white, eat away slowly at the branch. You can infer that the mice represent the yin and the yang of the Taoist philosophy. Chaos and order. Life and death. Like the Yin and the Yang, the two sides, like fish, chase each other's tails for eternity. The wolf chases the man into the well. The wolf represents the man’s past, which he can never return to. Inevitably, he will fall to the dragon he must face. He clings to his old life, which is on the branch that life gnaws away. He is being called now to a new mode of being. The journey into the dark night, where he will face new tests to find his soul. 

Tolstoy wanted to end his life because he saw no reason for doing anything. I propose this end was the end of a part of Tolstoy’s personality, not a call to end his physical existence. So, what does life call us to when reason can no longer carry us? To faith. Trusting in what we can not see. This must be a faith we find on our own, not the faith of someone else. Some of us will arrive at a conundrum that puzzles us and challenges everything we have come to know about this life. Because of the lack of meaning in our lives, because the sciences can not give us a solution, most of us pursue pleasure because we can not face these challenging questions that Tolstoy has courageously faced head-on. It is not a matter of choice to contemplate the absurdity of reality, but a demand. The void calls to us, and we are forced to stare into it and reflect on the projection displayed of the image we created of ourselves. If we are lucky, we will not be consumed, but strengthened by this encounter. The mystery of life urges us to go deeper into it, break down the boundaries of the ego, and face our shadow, to find deeper meaning. When nothing else works, when nothing can give you an answer, you can only wait and be still until a new path appears and you walk that path one step at a time, knowing something beyond guides your life. 

To find real meaning, we must break beyond rational thinking and logical reasoning. Life on Earth is temporary and finite. Life is full of paradox, and the intellect can not handle infinite paradox, so it crumbles under these insoluble questions—issues like how can there be life after death? God is everything and nothing. Where do ideas and thoughts come from? Who makes my dreams at night? There cannot be light without the dark. We must move further than the intellect. This means we must find a way to relate this finite existence to the infinite, the ineffable. Understanding that our lives, though temporary, have an impact on the lives around us and generations to come. The universe is an interconnected web that goes on even when you are gone. Evidence of this can be found in the civilizations that have come before us, that have inspired us, and found faith to live, the same faith that we are being asked to find today amidst all of the uncertainties we face. Without our ancestors' struggle, sacrifice, and suffering, we would not be here to carry the torch. Tolstoy adds, “I looked back on the course of my internal life and I was horrified. It was now clear to me that in order for a man to live, he must either fail to see the infinite or he must have an explanation of the meaning of life by which the finite and the infinite would be equated.” (Tolstoy, 61). We must come to terms with our finitude and create the meaning for it. Whether this faith that we establish in something beyond ourselves is true doesn’t matter as much as if it compels you to affirm your life, rather than deny it while you have it.

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The myth of Sisyphus, and other essays. Edited by Justin O'Brien, translated by Justin O'Brien, Vintage Books, 1991.

Tolstoy, Leo. Confession. Translated by David Patterson, W.W. Norton, 1983. Accessed 16 May 2025.