“Help! My Life Has No Meaning!”

The existential crisis is a tough one. It can creep up on you gradually or suddenly. Gradually, you find that what you’ve been doing doesn’t have the same sense of importance or urgency as it did before—or it simply doesn’t feel as meaningful or significant as it usually does. Suddenly, you might face a significant loss or setback in life where you wonder what it all was for. In either case, you reach the point at which you ask yourself, “Why are we doing any of this?”

I have experienced this myself. It’s the whole reason I write on the topic today. When I was 5, my father left in the middle of the night. When I was 6, I went to see him for three weeks and two days. When I came back to my mother, I felt a pain that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone—it was at that moment late at night crying my eyes out that I wondered, “What is the point of this if we’re just going to suffer?” Whether it’s meaninglessness from boredom, depression, pain, or emptiness, it’s coming from a perspective of someone who is completely devoid of desire and belief for anything specific in the future.

The problem with this perspective is that it’s difficult to get out of that mindset. After all, the brain primes itself to see things that it’s looking for—whether that be a lion in the tall grass or a reason to feel the way that it does about its situation. I’ve seen it hundreds of times myself: someone is down, and nothing can cheer them up. You can point to all the things in life that are going great, and none of it will matter. Outside of forcibly injecting you with drugs, no one can make you feel different.

That’s the unfortunate reality of anything in life: all external happiness is temporary; the only long-term happiness and fulfillment come from deliberate choices inside yourself to live in a way that makes you feel like your life was worth living. No one seems to believe that this is how life works, and yet you see it everywhere but choose to ignore or dismiss it. A large percentage of lottery winners are back to where they were before they won within a few years. A large number of women marry their spouse and, despite him being everything someone could ask for in a partner, they are not happy. A large number of men watch YouTube, play video games, and partake in pornography every day and then wonder why they are lonely. In contrast, you don’t often see the man working 12-hour days in the delicatessen have that issue.

There’s no doubt that we live in a paradoxical world: our lives are more convenient than ever, and yet more people are depressed and anxious than ever before. With less time spent on meaningful activities required to sustain life, we spend more time doing nothing of any value. More time to worry about the state of the world. More time to worry about the future. Yet few actually use that time to do things that they claim to be interested in: they love reading the latest social media post from their favorite political pundit, but they never read any of the bills. They claim to care about the homeless, but they don’t really volunteer. So much more time to do things, yet they can never find time to do anything.

I’ve personally found that childhood expectations for adulthood can be very influential in this. Johnathan Haidt has published a book recently on how teenage anxiety skyrocketed with the ubiquity of the smartphone (and the always-on access to social media). I know that I grew up watching cartoons that said that vegetables were disgusting and so never really gave them a try until I was at a friend’s house and tried them only out of exercising good manners. I now eat vegetables regularly. Similarly, millions of children every day are told that play is fun and work is boring. Video games are awesome, while learning is something you do at school. The most desired profession today is social media influencer/personality. We are taught in modern times that life is about minimizing work and maximizing the dopamine hits of entertainment, food, and drugs, and then we wonder why we don’t see any point in anything after years and years of that. Breaking an addiction can be difficult; breaking an entire worldview that’s reinforced by your environment and by the brain’s reward centers is even more difficult.

So, what do you do if you are in a situation where your life seems to have no meaning? I’ve already done a post on what to do if you don’t find your life to be meaningful, so this post will be more about ways to assess what’s causing that feeling and how to begin to address it:

What to Do to Find More Meaning in Life (by Cause)

• Loneliness – If you have experienced loss recently or have just been alone for a while, your issue is one of needing connection. This can be difficult in modern society, as the world becomes less connected as it increases in population (and, no, social media doesn’t count as real connection). As such, you need to find an in-group to become a part of. Typically, children find friends in school, adults at work, parents through their children’s school events, and people of all ages through social events or through public places like bars, clubs, parks, beaches, malls, and public squares. The thing about getting into a social circle is that you have to have something in common. In school, it was dressing similarly and being part of the same “crowd” (nerds, jocks, etc.). In adulthood, it’s usually similarities in interest. Two people alone in a bar can chat because they’re in the same place, both alone, and are possibly both watching the same thing on TV or drinking. One person joining a Yoga class can instantly chat up other attendees before and after the class. This approach to meaning is two-fold: you’re doing something that interests you and finding connections with people who also care about that thing. While I personally don’t recommend sources like cults, political rallies, or gangs, almost anything that gets you engaged with other people toward a common goal can kick your sense of meaning back into gear.
  
• Emptiness – If your life just feels devoid of purpose, you’re going to have to look around at what’s missing. Chances are, you already know but don’t want to admit it. If you’re missing a romantic partner, then follow the above on loneliness but use it to make friends and keep an eye out for suitable mates. If you have a spouse and kids but feel empty, it’s possibly that you’re not making time for yourself or that your job isn’t that interesting. If that’s the case, then you should look to make adjustments that will help you feel more engaged in your life. People too often jump to “my partner isn’t satisfying me” when you’re probably not even trying different things to see what’s causing the problem. If what you’re doing just doesn’t bring you any joy, then you are probably stuck due to some fear (e.g., money) and need to take time to explore your options to get onto the right path. (Note: I’m not including medical causes here—if you have a neurochemical issue, that is addressed with professional help)
  
• Boredom – The thing about habits is that you will keep doing them even if they’re no longer useful. Drug addicts do this by continuing to smoke, drink, or do drugs long past the point that they enjoyed doing them. But people forget that the same applies to other parts of life. Whether it’s watching YouTube or playing video games or any habit or hobby that you do in life, you might lose interest but keep doing it because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do. Try something else instead and see what happens. Maybe you want to pain, play music, go for a run, write, start a business, or learn a new skill. It is too often that when people have free time, they are trained to use it on entertainment—and that’ll keep being the case since billions of dollars are poured into advertising for the next movie, TV show, or other program. I can tell you, though, that I felt more passion for writing or creating something than I did for playing a video game that I didn’t care for but everyone said was great. Keep yourself engaged, and try not to cover up your emotional state with dopamine-inducing chemicals or activities.
  
• Aimlessness – This is probably one of the most difficult ones to hear. If you feel aimless and there’s nothing you can do, there is one tried-and-true method that works every time: joining a mission-focused group. You see this historically with people who join the military, a convent, or a cause like Greenpeace. Instantly, everything you do has purpose and it’s a purpose that’s greater than yourself. That is why many people turn their lives around with this kind of technique, especially when their life is in such disarray that they can’t seem to get out. There is an irony to this modern world: you are so free, you can choose to place restrictions onto yourself for your own good. People check into rehabilitation clinics when they can’t control themselves, and they join causes with high degrees of discipline when they can’t find it within themselves. There’s nothing wrong with taking that approach. Alternatively, you can try to find the discipline within yourself to find a meaningful goal or cause to work toward yourself. My only recommendation is to make sure that you are being constructive and not destructive or combative unless it’s in the defense of someone actively being harmed or threatened. Military service is an example of a cause of defending a nation from attack, and stopping an immediate harm you’re witnessing live is worth doing. But volunteering is always more constructive and productive than posting on social media, and starting a fundraiser and actually doing the work you want to see is more constructive than going and joining movements or protests that only want to complain about the problem rather than do anything about it. There are similarities between gangs, terrorist groups, cults, and some special interest activists: they take people who are lost in life and give them a purpose, only to use them as pawns for their own goals.
  
• Hopelessness/Pointlessness – This one is slightly different from aimlessness in that you’re not just unsure of your direction but you wonder why anyone would do anything in any direction. That’s a little bit more difficult. This requires a mindset shift. You might have to reprogram yourself. If you watch a lot of news or consume a lot of negative media, you have to cut that out. The human brain isn’t equipped to be battered with every catastrophe in the world every day. It’s like A Clockwork Orange, only you’re doing it to yourself. The slang advice is to “touch grass” when that’s your problem, but what they mean is get out of your own environment that you’ve created that has caused this feeling and get immersed in the real world. For example, if you saw a lost child on the street, you would immediately spring into action to help. If you were really hopeless and pointless, you would just let the child go because, “after all, nothing matters.” But things do matter, as evidenced by your actions. So you just need to kickstart your belief again by almost any means necessary. Go get an ice cream or sit in nature or watch a movie. Anything to disrupt your negative thought patterns. Talk to a friend. See your family. Or, what I love to prescribe, do something you hate doing—nothing cures you of your lack of appreciation for your life than being deprived of everything you like in it (see It’s a Wonderful Life for an example). Maybe you just need a vacation or some other change in scenery.
  

There are many more. The point of this post is to show that all sense of meaninglessness comes from your desires, beliefs, and emotions—you either lost something or found out you can’t have something that you want, lost belief in your future or whatever it is you’re doing now (or used to like doing), or you feel bad (bored, lonely, empty, depressed, etc.). But notice the common thread in the solution: growth. It’s not just pleasure-seeking, though that can help temporarily if it’s just a bad day; a long-term solution is always growth-oriented: working toward bettering your life, developing a new skill, or making new human connections and developing friendships and communities. That’s why you won’t find meaning in promiscuous sex, drugs, gambling, video games (though, interestingly, video games simulate growth in your character and also increase your ability to play the game), social media, binge eating or drinking, or sitting around all day every day. You’ll only find meaning in making your life and the lives of the people you care about better.

If you have no sense of meaning in life, something is broken. First, check, your biology: diet, water intake, sleep, sunlight, fresh air, illness, and other factors. Then, check your relationships. Then, check how you spend your time: work, leisure, hobbies, and other activities. There’s a decent chance that you don’t get enough basics to feel right like Vitamin D, sleep, or water. There’s another decent chance that you just need to find connections with people who you can spend quality time with. If those are okay, though, then it’s most likely that you’re just not spending your time in meaningful ways. If you look around and see that you never leave your house, you don’t socialize, and you spend all day doomscrolling, then you have so many things you can fix right now to get your life on track. It’s just a matter of building up the will to make the changes. If you feel nothing, then that should be your wake-up call that it’s time to make a change. A positive change.