Why Meaninglessness is the Most Profound Meaning in Life

By Jullan Karl Eugenio

“It’s all so meaningless, we may as well be extraordinary” artist Francis Bacon famously proclaimed — a
sentiment at which Leo Tolstoy arrived obliquely in his existential search for meaning. This line speaks to people in
a way that in affects them not only spiritually, but quite emotionally at first; they do not know how to react at the
idea.

It’s always been a goal for humanity to keep finding a purpose in life. Some have to live in order to
preserve the family, the country, or even humankind itself. Others only wish to live life to the fullest by doing every
single thing they love regardless of what mistakes they encounter.

A spiritual entertainer, Alan Watts, in his early thirties, walked away from a career as an Episcopal priest
and set out to popularize Zen teachings in the West. He spoke of how letting go and being lost is essential to finding
whatever it is you seek. His philosophy speaks about how the natural actions we do, basically primal instinct, is the
most interesting experience because we do not reconsider and try to focus on all the available information that our
senses perceive because in reality, he says, “We could never take all information into consideration anyway.”

Men and women dream of fancy cars, luxurious manors, and attractive partners in life, a great deal in fact is
that to them, that is the goal of life. They would risk working a job that is a bore and which they ultimately hate but
have to do in order to make a “living.” Alan Watts asked the question, “What is the living there?” He teaches that
constantly looking toward the pleasures of the future is like catching a will-o’-the-wisp that constantly eludes our
grasp.

The present moment happens to be the only experience. Our thoughts get in the way of what’s happening
now. By thinking, we only remove ourselves from the actual reality. Some people might ask, what is the meaning of
life then? What happens to our thoughts when we don’t think? Certainly, we find out that our thoughts give us our
own perspective of life. Perspectives differ when we think, but the moment is reality, it is also truth. When we see it,
feel it, and hear it, we know it’s real and that’s the truth that our senses know.

A quite thought-provoking idea was said by Alan Watts, “No valid plans for the future can be made by
those who have no capacity for living now.” The capacity for living for now also means the capacity for us to live in
a meaningless and present reality, which in turn, makes us realize that the real meaning of anything at all is the
moment. It is quite true when it is said that letting go equates finding it and when we try to find it, we let it go. This
is the basis for faith.

Faith is essential because it implies openness to the truth, and whatever it may it be. Belief might just be the
complete opposite of faith, more on clinging to the idea that it could be true than to ever consider that it couldn’t.
With this analogy, we can say that when we stop looking for meaning, we find it. Just as much as we let go of the
pursuit of pleasure by looking toward what’s ahead of us instead of what is in front of us because when a person
receives the greatest of pleasures, one will also be quite vulnerable to the most excruciating pains.

When we stop thinking, we stop trying to correct ourselves because in reality, we already know what to do;
we over-think things in order to accord them with what everything else is supposed to be. It’s also quite important to
note that this is a hesitation, the more we think about whether or not we do, the more we stall from what we want to
do.

At this point, one would ask “How do we stop thinking?” and they would inquire what benefits they receive
if they do, like as if it were a superpower. A question like that is the basis of all ego. We cannot force ourselves to
stop thinking. It is the faith of letting go and accepting everything that happens. Whatever thought that approaches
us, let it flow; don’t think about how it feels. How absurd it is to think about thoughts for it hinders us from
experiencing the moment. Whatever feeling of an action, a jerk, a step forward, have faith to let go of whatever you
think matters because stopping to think about it is a hesitation.

Ego is quite the subject because even people trying to seek it are finding ways on how to remove it from
their system. It is quite funny because in the first place, ego was never anywhere at all. It is not some part in your
brain that you can dissect; it is what you get when you think too much. Like when you want to say to a girl that you
love her, you’d rather not risk what happens just so that you can feel a bit secure in the hope that she does not have
the power to reject you, and then you think about how you should have done it afterwards, and you become
depressed, and then you get more depressed thinking about how stressed you are about it.

The only truth there is, is the present. Our eyes constantly touch on it, but our thoughts cause us to drift
away from it, avoiding it. The meaning of life isn’t to think of a clever meaning to whatever it is, but it is essentially
the experience of it. When St. Augustine was asked the meaning of time he said, “I know what it is, but when you
ask me, I don’t.” Alan Watts said that this sentiment is crucial to understand that reality has no definite meaning but
an experience we perceive. What we have done is we’ve put labels and social conventions on every single word and
idea as if we are trying to fix something. Reality does not need “fixing.” Although it is much easier for man to
connote things by sound, it can only mean so much as to it having a different meanings for somebody else. But when
we see the same thing, we touch on a single truth, and what thoughts we have about it are versions of the truth called
mistruths.

People, too, are in a constant state of hopelessness. They wish to be happy. Thinking that by working a
desk-job and saving for the future would get them closer and closer to it. As if happiness was just by the corner
somewhere. This couldn’t be more farther from the truth.

What matters, and everything that will ever matter, is not how you will fare 20 years from now, but how you
spend this very moment— immersed in it. We live for this moment; neither the past nor the future will matter to
what we feel now. And once you realize this, you will have learned to have stopped thinking and stop hesitating for
you have understood why everything exists at all. And it’s for what’s happening now.

As the Eastern philosopher Laozi famously proclaimed, “A bowl is most useful when it is empty.” In order
to truly accept all the things that we perceive, we must have a mind that thinks for itself and a consciousness having
realized this, quoting from Alan Watts, “The seeing requires a correction of mind, just as clear vision sometimes
requires a correction of the eyes.”