The meaninglessness of life

“The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism – and their assumption of immortality.” (Stanley Kubrick)

There are phases in most people’s lives when there doesn’t seem to be an apparent meaning to anything. When there are no immediate goals to achieve, there’s no money to spend and things are generally more annoying than satisfying.

One could argue that true meaning comes from the inside - but sometimes, all you have inside is emptiness (not the positive kind) and disillusionment. I’m not talking about “depression”, either, as in those times, rationality isn’t lost. There’s a German term that more closely describes what I mean: “Lebensmüde” - meaning you’re tired of life, fed up, perhaps dissatisfied and restless. I believe this is exactly, what Kubrick means. His suggested remedy is for man to “create his own meaning”.

How does one go about creating meaning in life?

And that is the greatest mystery of all young Jedi! What IS your path! Your choices! How Will you make them. Teachers can help and guide, but as sages,we long to see the individual rise from the old and into the new. Make your choices, fail a few times. Do it, try it, in some instances, yes think but for the most part, do you! You'll never go wrong and you'll always learn more.

Meditation grants new sights.
Discussion, not arguing and gaining new wisdom always helps.
The 16 teachings of the Order are my fav tools to make the mind and heart different.
Reading new topics, learning new topics.
Just a drop in the bucket!!!

"To a man with a hammer everything looks like the head of a nail"
...but nine times out of ten it just looks like a nail, it's not.

So... that being said, don't bluntly swing at every thing.

Life is what we focus on.

So I'm no psychologist, but that rationality is something retained during depression sounds kind of iffy to me. So if you could kindly cite a source for that, it could be helpful.
However, as someone who does speak and write German fluently, daily and by necessity, I can say that "lebensmüde" is not just a state of being tired in life, but rather of being tired of life. German has its own share of words of latin origin, but they are far fewer than in English. A more accurate translation of "lebensmüde" would, as far as I know, be "suicidal", and that is also how the term is used.
But these are both points on the side and take nothing away from your post or the question posed within.
On that I would say that, rationally speaking, there is no point in life where it appears to have any meaning outside of itself. Just as inherent values, so is inherent meaning, in my opinion, an oxymoron. As in an earlier post of mine, I would again postulate that meaning is not a property of an object, but a relationship between the object and the respective subject.
Now, how do we go about creating said relationship? I suppose whoever does it, does so in their own way. At this point I would rather go the stoicist route and ask whether a lack of meaning is something that should disturb our inner peace and happiness. Not that we have full control over how we feel, but is there really a need to attach ourselves to things this fragile? But of course there is. And there is nothing wrong with that. Would life be even worth the effort if we were not at risk of emotional collapse? Or to oppose it to a different extreme, is a life of full stability and by implication monotony, really a full life? I'd rather lose hope time and time again, only to regain it by something else that sparks my imagination. I'd rather fall and weep over how pointless this all is, only to realize how much I love it just the way it is, rather than sit idly on either side indefinately. If anything, having a meaning (or none) that would not ever break is what - in my opinion - takes but more meaning away in its own right.

I'm somewhat sad to see my reply deleted after a computer malfunction. I wrote something really quite nice. Argh. Anyway.

I feel that I can understand and relate to that feeling. I'm rarely convinced I have meaning in my life and so I may not be in the best position to answer your question...

But here we go anyway!

How do we create meaning in life? I think a major part of this is in being present with what we do. I think that meaning comes during or maybe even after our actions rather than before. It comes with the action of doing something, being present with it and not expecting meaning to come. I think that meaning is a little like the living truth. It's not constant, it is changing and we can't hold on to it. And so in this light, perhaps I'm wrong to answer your question by saying being present is a major part of creating meaning in life, because we can't "create" meaning, but only pay attention to it when and if it happens.

Funnily enough I was listening to a Watts lecture when I read your message and part of it seems to me to relate to your question- so here it is-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFM5CPlBi7o

(I’ll post that the Alan Watts thread page soon as well I hope!)

Thank you for asking your question- it's a good one!

P.S This idea comes I think from a recent conversation I had around here... Team Effort!

Life may not only be meaningless but absurd.

Thank you for the answers so far!

Generally speaking I can see three different theoretical arguments here:

1) there is meaning to life, but in order see it, you need to stop trying to find it and instead let it happen, let it carry you. Simply be mindful and attentive of everything and you will find meaning (or be "liberated", in Watts' words)

2) Life only has meaning as life and not outside of itself / beyond that. Trying to find meaning negates it (which would work in conjunction with 1)

3) There is no meaning, neither inherent nor extrinsic - life is absurd.

and a practical approach:

4) The meaning of life is individual. All we can do is try and (sometimes) fail, again and again - we're here to explore life. But do so with as much consideration and realization of the true nature of things as we possibly can. We can use meditation as a means for analysis and also of sharpening our minds to realize 1) + 2)


Are there other theoretical and practical approaches?

The first chapter of Jiddu Krishnamurti's "Freedom From The Known" , I feel says a great deal about our tendency to find meaning around us. And other chapters say a lot too. Whenever we become bored in a moment and reach to our phone or computer or something else because we cannot stand to be alone with ourselves, because all we see is a hollow, boring, dull blank slate of our reality and we hope to reach for something that will put something on that slate for us, because we don't seem to want to trust in ourselves to do it on our own instead, and create our own meaning within that "boring", silent, lonely-seeming moment.

But I think developing the ability to sit with yourself (like you used to as a kid with crayons and paper, or simple toys for you to manipulate out of your own imagination) can be a very important thing to have - to be able to set aside all the adult stresses (not resist them or reject them, just set them aside and let them be) and seize the moment for the sake of enjoying your own awareness of it.

In my opinion, it is not necessary to create a meaning for life. The sense is simply make the most of the experience of being alive, it implies many things we deem good, some believe that bad, but it's all part of the teaching. My father said we feel pain because we are alive; what we can not do is give ourselves to despair and wanting to fit in a perfect world of ideology

There's a very good book (which is in our library ) called 'Man's Search for Meaning', written by a survivor of the holocaust. It posits that we find our own meaning in life... it doesn't matter what that is, as long as it is meaningful for us.. for some it will be children, or it will be a personal cause etc. The people that survived through the concentration camps in world war II were those that had found a meaning in their lives that kept them going.
Life itself, outside of us, just is... any meaning that life has is assigned by us.