I agree in principal, Hence, why I suggested Camus in my original comment.
But what happens when you can't attribute meaning to anything? Do you revert to religion or suicide (Those were the three options for camus)?
But what happens when you can't attribute meaning to anything? Do you revert to religion or suicide (Those were the three options for camus)?
This is certainly not a universal cure, but for me the ideas presented in this ted talk have helped: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy?...
So, set a goal and work towards that - but, looking at your profile that suggestion seems trite and silly, because you are and have been doing that for some time. Doing difficult things falls into the same category.
My suggestion would be to pick something completely pointless - something that you could easily pay someone to do for you, better than you have time-skill for and then do that.
For example, I'm building a house. Fairly big, not huge, wooden. I have no training in it and it has taken 5 years of evenings and weekends so far. Any reasonable construction team would have finished in 6 months and it would have had better quality of work.
I love it - it makes me happy to look at the small bit that I finished yesterday and somehow it gives me a sense of purpose. Maybe it's just a distraction - something to keep away the existential dread, but so what, because nothing has intrinsic value, this purpose is the best possible purpose for me.
At the end of my day I often feel that I have just kept the cogs grinding for another day. I do feel that my work is "important", and I'm good at it, and the money surely improves my quality of life, but it'd sure be nice to be outside sometimes in the real world digging a hole or planting a tree or something, not just the endless arranging of remote electrons.
Frankly what you describe is exactly why I started building real things as a hobby.
When you can't attribute meaning to anything, Camus says, according to some of my self-interpretation, that you have to live while accepting the triviality of it all. Live while acknowledging death is a perfectly valid alternative and nothing is really stopping you committing suicide. But only when you are on that edge are you truly living,
Is this not the basis for The Myth of Sisyphus? If I recall correctly, Camus rejects both religion and suicide as ultimately absurd.
It's an honest question. I can imagine that a life without meaning would feel, well... meaningless.