What is the Meaning of Life?

What is the meaning of life?

Seriously, though. What is it? And is this even a question we can answer?

A lot of people have tried to answer this question. Some people have said that the meaning of life is to be happy. Some people have said that the meaning of life is love. Some have even said that it’s 42. But none of these answers really seem to satisfy us. And when we think about it, is there any answer to this question that would satisfy us?

At the end of the movie Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, for example, the meaning of life is finally revealed: “Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live in harmony with people of all creeds and nations.” Everything about this answer is reasonable, of course, but it still seems like there is something missing. “Yes, that’s all well and good,” we might say, “but what’s really the meaning of life?”

So, is there an answer to the question of the meaning of life that is actually satisfying? Or are we doomed to be forever dissatisfied with the answers people give us?

I believe that there is an answer that is satisfying, but it’s probably not the one you think.

In order to properly understand what it would mean for life to have a meaning, we first have to make two distinctions.

The first distinction is between meaning and purpose. People often use these two terms as though they were interchangeable, but there is a subtle distinction between them. Purpose is what something is for, while meaning is a quality that something can have. The purpose of a broom, for example, is to clean. But a dance, on the other hand, may not be “for” anything, yet might still have meaning.

The second distinction is between meaning in life and the meaning of life. Meaning in life is something that we hopefully all experience at one point or another. The meaning of life, however, is a complex philosophical query. It concerns the role of life in the context of the entire cosmos. And since we don’t fully understand either life or the cosmos, we are in no position to determine what the one signifies for the other.

From these two distinctions, we can draw a few conclusions.

First, we can conclude that life needn’t have a purpose in order to have a meaning. Just because Bach’s music, for example, might not be “for” anything in the same way that a broom is for cleaning, doesn’t mean that it can’t have meaning.

Second, we can conclude that it may be more useful to talk about meaning in life than to talk about the meaning of life. This is because the meaning of life is a grand, cosmic question that we may never get the answer to, while meaning in life is something we are all capable of experiencing, regardless of our philosophical inclinations.

So, having made these distinctions, is it possible for us to know what the meaning of life is?

First, let’s consider what it means to know in the first place. According to the cognitive scientist John Vervaeke, who I recently conversed with over email, there are four ways of knowing.

The first is propositional knowing. This means knowing through propositions, statements, and language. This is the way of knowing that we are most familiar with. It might be called “knowing what,” since it consists of things like knowing what the capital of Brazil is, or knowing what you ate for dinner last night.

However, as embodied creatures, we not only know the world through propositions about it, but also through living in it. Which brings us to the second way of knowing, which is procedural knowing. This means knowing through living and doing things in the world — or, to put it in the somewhat more abstruse cognitive science terminology, “enacting procedures.” For example, you know how to ride a bike by doing it, not by saying propositions about it. This kind of knowledge might be called “knowing how,” since it consists of things like knowing how to ride a bike, or knowing how to cook a meal.

As conscious creatures, our actions and procedures are grounded in our conscious experience of these actions and procedures. Which brings us to the third way of knowing, which is perspectival knowing. This means knowing by experiencing. This kind of knowledge might be called “knowing what it is like,” because it consists of things like knowing what it is like to feel sorrow, or knowing what it is like to taste a good piece of chocolate. When we taste chocolate, it is the experience that we care about, not the propositions.

In Vervaeke’s view, all of these ways of knowing are rooted in the fourth and deepest way of knowing, which is participatory knowing. Participatory knowing means knowing something by participating in it. For example, you know what love is by being in love, and not by reading about love. This is different from procedural knowing because it is possible to act out all the procedures of love, like giving people flowers and kissing them and all that other stuff, without actually being in love. This kind of knowledge might be called “knowing by being in,” because it consists of things like knowing love by being in love, or knowing what an abusive relationship is by being in one.

Armed with this understanding of the different ways we can know things, we can address an important question: why are so many answers to the meaning of life so unsatisfying? We can answer in this way: because they only exist on the first layer of Vervaeke’s 4-layered model.

Consider once again the meaning of life that is given at the end of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: “Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live in harmony with people of all creeds and nations.” This answer is a proposition, a statement. This means that it is something that we can know on layer 1, through propositional knowing.

However, this answer is not satisfying. Why? Because we only know it on the first layer, while the real meaning of life, I would argue, is to be found on the other 3 layers. That is to say: in order for us to get an answer we are genuinely satisfied with, we would have to not just know it propositionally (layer 1), but we would have to deeply enact meaning (layer 2), deeply experience meaning (layer 3) and deeply participate in meaning (layer 4).

This is why the distinction between meaning in life and the meaning of life is so important. Someone telling us what the meaning of life is doesn’t satisfy us. What satisfies us is experiencing meaning in our lives.

So the answer to the meaning of life is not happiness, or love, or even 42, even though all of these answers have merit. The answer is something I cannot tell you. But that does not mean that it is a secret. It is not hidden. It is right there is plain sight, you’re just not looking in the right place.

Stop looking for a proposition and start looking for an experience. Stop trying to know the meaning of life and start trying to live it.

If you’ve gotten this far in the post and you still don’t know what the meaning of life is, you’re right. You’ll only know it once you experience it. And you’ll only experience it once you close this post and start living your life.