The biggest question for the human race has always been, What is the meaning of life? It’s proof that life is a mystery, and we don’t really deal with what we don’t know too well. We fear what we don’t know, so to provide comfort, we wrap ourselves in stories such as ‘everything happens for a reason.’ Every event in our lives must have an explanation. Even less subtly, we want the explanations to happen as life unfolds in real time. Thus creating the commentary in our head.

A Need for Control

The need for meaning is camouflaged as the need for order. We can’t fathom the idea of being alive on this earth for no purpose and can’t truly deal with the uncertainty of life without letting go of the fabricated purpose we’ve made on our own. Because we have purpose, we can now dictate our lives instead of believing that we have no control—the things we do actually mean something, rather than being a complete waste. So loss means growth, and failure means a lesson. Because these negative experiences are repackaged as positive, seeking meaning is viewed as a wise endeavor. This perception keeps us from confronting the fear that comes with needing meaning. The fear that nothing in life has order at all.

Every single one of us is the author of our books, and we’ve become very good storytellers. The issue is that we’ve yet to recognize that we are fiction storytellers. We hardly ever tell ourselves the truth. We’ve built a culture on reframing negativity into positivity, believing that positivity is the ultimate goal, but only to result in shame and guilt for those who aren’t supposed to feel the way they do.

The breakup of a loved one brings legitimate sadness, yet we are taught to tell the story that this person’s leaving provides more room for the “one.” The death of a loved one was a part of God’s plan. Whether we believe this or not, it still dismisses the grief that we are now ashamed to feel. We no longer want the truth. We seek a narrative that offers a straightforward cause-and-effect explanation, enabling us to take control of how we experience life.

The Search Comes with Pain

It seems we have yet to realize that this narrative only compounds our suffering. Grieving is relatively simple when we feel the pain that’s within us. Yet, we don’t do this. When we experience grief, we often believe that something is wrong. By believing something is wrong, we also believe that something needs to be corrected or improved. A simple task of feeling one’s emotion turns into an analysis of how someone can change their current circumstance. We go to therapy because we believe there is a need for interpretation of a simple emotion that isn’t inherently good or bad.

Life no longer has the freedom to be as it is. No, life now needs justification. Life now needs a reason to live. You wouldn’t say that about the grass on the ground, or the clouds in the sky. Why do we ask it of ourselves? This search for meaning only brings about more suffering as the searcher starts to realize there is none.

So we make up our own stories, not noticing that these stories are fragile. Nothing we can make can be eternal, including our stories. It has a beginning, climax, and then an end. The story you tell yourself may seem true today, but something will inevitably happen to prove it false. What does that do to us? It makes us more distraught because we love to be right, even if life continuously proves us wrong—this yearning for meaning guarantees disappointment. We can’t possibly know the truths of life, so we hold onto fragments like a security blanket. Maybe it’s the case that life does have meaning. We might just be too limited to experience what it is—pretending that we can does us no good.

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