Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer. ― Joseph Campbell

The search for purpose… The folly of the 21 century self help movement. I say that because more often than not it leads to despair and stuckness.

The problem in my opinion is that the idea of purpose and meaning is subjective and personal yet most people tend to try to measure it in objective ways usually involving the need for validation outside of our self. I have not met anyone that has not sucked at measuring experience.

After my own search for purpose/meaning I have come to the conclusion that any philosophical or psychological search for purpose can only end in the absurd.

In philosophy, “the Absurd” refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any. In this context absurd does not mean “logically impossible”, but rather “humanly impossible”. The universe and the human mind do not each separately cause the Absurd, but rather, the Absurd arises by the contradictory nature of the two existing simultaneously.

Purpose and meaning like air cannot be grasped and is not something that can be searched for, these concepts can only be experienced and lived. To experience purpose and meaning one must stop looking. (Stop the seeking experience and in that space experience the moment as is and ones involvement with it – that is meaning, that is purpose)

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
― Joseph Campbell

I have found my guides in books though like you would love to meet a mentor in the desert or woods

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl – Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death.

Learning to Fall – The Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Philip Simmons

“We do not have a say in all that befalls us, but we do have a say in the shape of our own character. Character, too often, is something others feel we must have beaten into us. Truth is, much of our character is under no one’s control but is shaped haphazardly by our families, our communities, and our culture—not to mention the genetic foll of the dice by which we’re made to begin with. But increasingly as we reach adulthood, we come to see character as a matter of choice. We choose practices and principles that share our character, building either a sound vessel or a weak one. We choose friends whose qualities we wish to develop or preserve in ourselves. Religious faith and spiritual practice are thought to strengthen this vessel, creating a sound container for our developing relationship to mystery, suffering, and the Divine. Life throws things at us that we cannot predict and cannot control. What we can control is who we are along the way.”

“When we accept our impermanence, letting go of our attachment to things as they are, we open ourselves to grace. When we can stand calmly in the face of our passing away, when we have the courage to look even into the face of a child and say, ‘This flower, too, will fade and be no more,’when we can sense the nearness of death and feel its rightness equally with birth, then we will have crossed over to that farther shore where death can hold no fear for us, where we will know the measure of the eternal that is ours in this life.
We all have within us this capacity for wonder, this ability to break the bonds of ordinary awareness and sense that though our lives are fleeting and transitory, we are part of something larger, eternal and unchanging.”
– Philip Simmons

Came across a blog by Connie Zweig that I found interesting

Meeting The Shadow At Midlife

“To live with shadow awareness is to turn away from the peaks toward the valleys, away from the heights and the rarified air toward the depths and the dark and the dense. It is to turn toward the unpleasant thoughts, hidden fantasies, marginal feelings that are taboo. Our secret lust, greed, envy, rage. To live with shadow awareness is to move our eyes from up to down, to relinquish the clarity of blue-sky thinking for the uncertain murkiness of a foggy morning.” That is so beautiful, and yet we live in a culture that’s addicted to blue-sky thinking. So how can people begin to open themselves to the shadow in their lives?

“The Greeks had a name for this downward path: katabasis, or descent. Our ancient forebears understood that we needed not only to fly above with the birds, lightly and full of grace, but also to crawl beneath with the snakes, slowly, silently, on our bellies. We do not choose this lower path; it chooses us. At midlife, we do not have depression; rather, depression has us. And if we can allow the ego to take a back seat and go along for the ride, then the real journey can begin: depression can become descent; the refusal to go down can become the choice to go down. And the appointment with the shadow can be kept” – conniezweig

“it is hard to know whether they are regretting their decision”… after a break-up there is a part of all of us that, no matter the nature of the break-up, wants/needs to believe/think the other regrets.

Of course such questions about the ‘other’ after a breakup are a distraction from the real work that needs to be done for personal healing. What the other person does after a break-up is not about us. Still…

My observation and experiences is that when it comes to break-ups and how genders respond or react to them the experiences are often interchangeable so it probably best not to generalize and associate one way of reacting as being gender based.

For example my own experience appears to be the opposite of yours as it was my girlfriend that broke up with me and within months found another. On my darker days I imagined if she ever regretted the decision, if she hurt as much as I hurt… but those questions never help. Even now writing about it, I feel an old sense of betrayal rise. Was the love she professed a lie. Is love a lie…

When reading your post the thought came to mind of a need to reconcile the objective language and symbolic language when it comes to describing the expected, assumed, actual experience of the world.

For example the idea of Santa Claus being real or not real. The stories are real, the guys dressing up as him each year are real, and more importantly the idea of Santa is real in that it is related to. Does Santa have to objectively exist to be real and only then related to? Our answer to that question say about our experiences being a shame or not.

You might find the book Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski helpful as well as the work of Joseph Campbell.

How do I continue to work with the ego, rather than fighting it?

Great question.
I think to answer that question we need to understanding what the ego is and isn’t.

In the west we tend to over identify with the ego while in the East the ego viewed as something to be nullified. Both ways I think get us into trouble if we are expected to live in the world.

In my opinion the ego is a valid and important part of the whole that is the Self.
The ego is not the self but a part of the Self, A part of the team through which we become aware, we become consciousness of self and set intentions. We work then do not to identify with the ego nor however do we negate it. (Fight it)

Ultimately the ego is the part of ourselves that acts mostly as an observer and means through which we set intention. (The ego consciousness should not to try to control the intention only set it, observe, adjust, repeat…)

Once we stop identifying our sense of Self with our ego consciousness, the ego becomes not the captain of the ship but the navigation and communication system. Communication between the conscious and unconscious, the objective and subjective, the inner and the outer…

It is the ego through which we set our course, retrieve and store our charts/memories and pays attention. Paying attention in a way that is a doing by not doing – not labeling or measuring our thoughts as in I’m a bad person because I am a bad piano player… note the difference between labeling thoughts as bad or good and labeling an experience of some moment of time that we felt as bad or good. When we label our thoughts we have the tendency to label our ego which if identified as the self we become.

By paying attention and observing we learn we are more than the sum of our parts, more than ego consciousness and the labels/measurements we make. We learn to forgive our self’s for our failings and as we forgive ourselves, others.
Life becomes less hectic as we strive and live our truths as we know them to be in the moment, open to learning. We breathe.

The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. – James Allen

Not a great quote.
I think the problem in the quote may be that it is open to a semantic reaction to the words like ‘calm’, ‘tranquil’ and ‘adapt’.

For myself those words comes across as passive and as you mention apply to many people I know to whom could not be relay on. A yes man adapts and can be calm and tranquil about it but should he be relied on?

I suspect James Allen was thinking about those people who when your around them you feel yourself becoming calm and assured. However I suspect that that has little to do with there outward appearance of being calm and tranquil, something more is going on.

I’ve been reading up on the principle of vibration which address this phenomena.
These are some people who influence/vibrate from the authentically of their inner being. A authenticity that comes from a being that is a doing by not doing. When you come in contact with such people it’s kind of like when iron filings comes into contact with a magnet which influences all the filings to align themselves.

Have you had an experience of being in a concert and it felt as if everyone was connected, all the ‘strings’ vibrating at the same frequency and aligned? Of course that’s music but there are those that have the gift to influence people in the same way, from their being. Some vibrate and influence for good some for ill.

“The point is there ain’t no point.” ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men (Horrible pointless movie – which was the point)

The danger of finding everything pointless is not noticing when you slip into nihilism

“The most dangerous side of nihilism, however, is that in the end it becomes happy and satisfied with itself.” But oh so empty.

Have your read Life of PI?
“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

“‘So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?’ Mr. Okamoto: ‘That’s an interesting question?’ Mr. Chiba: ‘The story with animals.’ Mr. Okamoto: ‘Yes. The story with animals is the better story.

Choose a better story.

The only way to overcome analysis paralysis and inactivity is to stop analyzing and get up and do something.

Perhaps if we were to give it a name it would be existential depression, but at its very core i find it more logical

I could be wrong however I think the logical search for meaning and the ‘point of things’ is existential.

As a seeker for understanding and wanting to know why I very much relate to your problem. Philosophically I suspect that all such seeking ends in the absurd to which I give Albert Camus the last word. My opinion after my travel down that road is that all philosophy ends in the absurd.

Similar to Camus I concluded that the question of ‘what the point it’ is not the point and ultimately unhelpful. The point is you, you are the point and that must be enough. It is enough.

If you are going to wait until you know with ‘certainty’ what the point of some act is, you will never act. You are looking for validation externally when meaning, purpose and ‘the point’ can and will only be found internally.

I do not mean to be harsh, however as I have fallen into the same trap as you describe I can tell you the need to understand what the point is misses the point and leads nowhere. There will be no answer that cannot be logically dissected until you have proven to yourself that you were right all along and that there is not point.

I wonder if the problem is not that ‘all is pointless’ but that it has become a excuse not to live your potential. The problem then wold not be about finding the right logic but one of fear.

Fear is to courage as doubt is to faith (faith in this case that there is a point). Do not let a fear of uncertainty and not knowing keep you from life.

If I were able to send my younger self a message I would say that seeking understanding is apart of your nature so must be honored however don’t get stuck in it, don’t use it as a excused from entering into your life.

Have you read the book or seen the movie ‘Fault in the Stars’. Should Grace have avoided the experience of relationship because she saw no point and that life was meaningless?

or may Download Five for Fighting song the Reason

There was a man back in ’95
Whose heart ran out of summers
But before he died, I asked him
Wait, what’s the sense in life
Come over me, Come over me

He said,
Son why you got to sing that tune
Catch a Dylan song or some eclipse of the moon
Let an angel swing and make you swoon
Then you will see… You will see
Then he said,
Here’s a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There’s a reason for the world
You and I…

Picked up my kid from school today
Did you learn anything cause in the world today
You can’t live in a castle far away
Now talk to me, come talk to me

He said,
Dad I’m big but we’re smaller than small
In the scheme of things, well we’re nothing at all
Still every mother’s child sings a lonely song
So play with me, come play with me
And Hey Dad
Here’s a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There’s a reason for the world
You and I…

I said,
Son for all I’ve told you
When you get right down to the
Reason for the world…
Who am I?

There are secrets that we still have left to find
There have been mysteries from the beginning of time
There are answers we’re not wise enough to see
He said… You looking for a clue I Love You free…

The batter swings and the summer flies
As I look into my angel’s eyes
A song plays on while the moon is high over me
Something comes over me

I guess we’re big and I guess we’re small
If you think about it man you know we got it all
Cause we’re all we got on this bouncing ball
And I love you free
I love you freely

Here’s a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There’s a reason for the world
You and I…

I don’t think I’m depressed, i just can’t see the ‘logic’ in doing things anymore

Depression takes many forms and you appear to be have gotten stuck in existential depression.
What is the point?

What I mean is that the danger with existential angst is that we become the stories and thoughts we tell ourselves.

The good news is that you are the cure the bad news is that you are the cure. (If your story was told as fairy tale this would be the point where the hero would be slapped hard. What is this thing call logic when on the quest? )

I have read a great deal on the subject of meaning, purpose and happiness and so can save you time. Unless you are interested in the concepts of meaning, propose and happiness for their own sake you will find few answers. Looking to the concepts/logic for answers of ‘self’ will only make the pit you have dug yourself deeper.

Meaning, purpose and happiness are not matters of the intellect. They are not ‘things’ that can be found, grasped or held… they can only be experienced.

Meaning purpose and happiness exist in every moment, not to be grasped but noticed. I know that sounds trite and suspect that truth is unhelpful as like most of us we long for something objective, something we can own. Yet that is one of the tasks of the hero journey

When does a seeker become a finder? It’s not until you give up the search that you are at a place to find it.

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot

We live in a time were only the objective extraverted purpose and meaning are valued and only experience purpose when others acknowledge that we have it. We sit around asking anyone who will listen to tell us who we are, what we should do.

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” ― Joseph Campbell

You are your meaning. To ‘find’ it my advice is to stop asking questions and seeking logic and act.

Even if everything is pointless what does that thought of pointlessness matter? Why should that stop you from experience?

You will not find experience you long for in the eyes of another you can only experience it in experience

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” ― Joseph Campbell

The life that you ought to be living is the one you are living! So Live it! Break out of the self-defeating cycle of analyst paralyses on thinking you must understand concepts like meaning, purpose and happiness in order to have them. Do not seek happiness and be happy.