Stop Looking for an Ultimate Purpose to Life

Why The Big Question is a waste of time

My longtime friend texted me recently with a weird story.¹ He was doing some Saturday morning grocery shopping when a stranger came up to him and asked him about meaning in life.² Unsurprisingly, this caught him off guard. That is not something you expect to hear while checking the ripeness of an avocado at Whole Foods.³

In any case, this prompted us to have a conversation about The Big Question. The stroke-your-beard and dramatically-look-out-the-window-while-sipping-your-coffee question. You know, the meaning of life question.

After some discussion, my friend and I agreed that you must have a personal answer to The Big Question. It’s all about the individual. For one it may be their art, for another their faith, for another their family. For some, it may be all those at once. For others, it might be all those but at different times throughout their life.

Now, you can ponder the possibility of an overarching, ultimate purpose of life all you want, but I think it is a waste of time. Because there is none. “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter,” said the scientist Richard Feynman. “Explore the world…nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” The fact that nobody ever figures out the ultimate meaning of life is a feature, not a bug.

It’s a counterintuitive idea. But as the physicist David Deutsch has explained, if you knew what your ultimate purpose was, or what the “general meaning of life” was, then all the further joys of learning and discovery would not be available to you anymore. Your existence would stop being an open-ended investigation into a fascinating world. It would become something more closed, static, and dull.

Imagine if God came down and said, “Hey y’all, so actually the meaning of life is (x).” The odds that this would satisfy everyone are zero. It is beautiful that people can create their own sources of meaning and change them over time as they see fit.

Some people may still despair. If there is no overarching meaning to life, they think, then nothing can be meaningful. They must put on a trench coat, smoke a cigarette, and read nihilistic poetry, or something like that, I imagine. It’s like, no. Don’t do that. Being alive is so electric. Nihilists need one of two things, likely both: to take better care of their body and experience more genuine love with other humans.

Essentially, my argument is that there is no ultimate meaning of life, but that is a good thing because it allows for individual meaning-making and infinite learning and exploration.

1. We had this conversation over voice messages. I wish voice messages were the default mode of communication on iMessage. For instance, I don’t know if you could call it the default mode of communication for Latinos, but it is definitely much more common for them to use voice messages. Over the years as I’ve practiced speaking Spanish online on WhatsApp, it has become clear—and even a running joke among some—that Spanish speakers love voice messages more than anyone else in the world. I loved using the app Airchat because it was a voice-note-based social media platform. You’d be surprised how positive a response people have to voice notes if you lead with it. It is so much more fun, too. Of course, if it’s a short message, texting is better. But if you’re having any type of in-depth conversation with someone, voice messages are a more enjoyable form of communication.

2. The stranger said they were a part of a study group. However, after discussing it further, we realized this may not have been the case. He told me it didn’t seem like she was part of a study group. She didn’t take any notes, and something seemed off about her. Perhaps she was struggling and wanted to talk to someone. On the other hand, the cynical possibility we discussed was that she was a thief trying to pickpocket him by asking him a deep question that would distract him from his immediate surroundings.

3. I imagined this part. I don’t know which grocery store he shops at or what he eats, but considering his dedication to fitness I bet he eats a healthy amount of fruit. Presumably avocados could be part of that equation.