The Beautiful Meaning of Meaningless-ness

I had been leading a flustered life and it makes me sick.
Beyond a point I also know it is not possible to talk, I mean how much can one keep saying when life has been taken over by wrong kind of restrictions and keeps me quite confined where headspace s also most sought after (beyond several other things)

On such a day I went out to meet an old friend who made lotza sense and it was good to see him expressing himself full throttle.
He imbibed a lot of enthusiasm about carving the niche and having the patience to do the same. All charged I knew there was no dearth of opportunities but at the same time the truth of stagnation and having the worst challenge in life to keep thee patience.
Then I met another friend whose life is also fairly screwed, over apparent and not so apparent reasons and then I began my journey of demystifying the beauty of meaninglessness.
We had nothing to talk about because we did know exactly each others state of mind, at the same time when we got to talking about other people we figured they were also screwed at some level whereas the tragedy lies in the fact that those ignorant ones little realized their weaknesses (please pardon if I am sounding atrociously judgemental)!
And then we started smiling, often breaking into illogical bouts of laughter. It was like overstating the obvious. And after a point it slowly started sinking into me that though we did not have anything to talk about, neither did we feel the need nor the obligation. It was not even remotely uncomfortable; it was like two souls we knew about their endangered existence as a species and inspite of that they kept wandering into nameless vistas. As time passed by we realized the meaninglessness that had created a halo around us. Gradually quite unaware of what it was we began to enjoy it.

Time passed by and in a café in Park Street we sat over almost three hours trying to unravel the meaninglessness which un-knowingly we both took a lot of solace in. When we try to argue (atleast I do) that communication is the best source to avoid confusion but often I was tongue tied because there was nothing more to communicate except for meaninglessness. In some form or the other at the highest level of frustration I often exclaim how meaningless life is! But as per all the maestros are concerned say from one Melville and Hawthorne, Nietzsche and Marx or very dear friend Kafka they all saw meaninglessness coming into their lives. The existence of this phenomenon has been described by many poets, writers, philosophers but largely there has been a morbid tone to it. It is said that meaninglessness creeps in when life is confronted with the ultimate question of about its importance, about its existence and pondering over the question leads to a no answer situation, or maybe it is very arbid to believe. Life at that point seems very pointless, cruel and a little mad! But what we do not consciously realize is the fact that it is this state of madness at different level of consciousness that inspires us to create.

While I was doing something as vague as a desk research on meaninglessness I discovered that most definitions would want to look at meaningless as lose of aim, or goals in life-over work, family, love, marriage or religion or maybe several other things.
The even more interesting part is to look at the philosophy of meaninglessness; and the way it is explained in several of the philosophical narratives; A sneak peek to the same follows –


Relative Meaninglessness

1. Disappointed expectations;failure to fulfill accepted criteria.
2. Discrepancy between established criteria and observable actualities;
based on intellectual information;existentially disclosed.
3. Temporary—lasts only until the discrepancy is corrected
4. Limited to a specific realm of meaning.
5. We know what to change to bring meaning.

Existential Meaninglessness

1. Frameworks of meaning collapse; lack of ultimate purpose in life.
2. Uncaused; discovered as a fundamental condition-of-being;
3. Permanent—no matter what we change, meaninglessness continues.
4. Pervades every dimension of life.
5. Nothing we can do will make life ultimately meaningful.

But to me the beauty of meaninglessness lies in the fact that it does not follow it a protocol, it does not have boundaries, or it has no restrictions. I therefore join the bandwagon of Satre and Camus who urge us to embrace our meaninglessness. They claim that life is better because it is meaningless and absurd. If there is no given purpose to which we must conform to gain meaning, then we can create our own meanings in the midst of meaninglessness. By rebelling against our Predicament, we create our own Authenticity.

So here I am, cheering away to the new discovery I made that meaninglessness is a very meaningful phenomenon and the fact that it challenges the logic of meanings and even probably illusions makes it another experience that has its sweet charm!
Till I walk the lanes of finding solace in meaninglessness of being occupied and enjoy such innovative evenings, Trublu, cheers once again.

31st August-11th Sept 2007