What makes us say our Life has Meaning?

“Life lacks Meaning now”

My friend had dedicated his life to one highly “impactful” goal: “effective altruism”. However, he found that this all-consuming goal was, not surprisingly, consuming all of his time and making him miserable. So, after some reflection last year, he set a boundary on exactly how much he would spend on it, in money and worry, and got the load off his shoulders.

But it wasn’t a happy ending:

Friend: Life lacks meaning now. Trying to navigate around that.

My story was very similar, but I’ve been busy with work over the last year. I had the last couple of weeks off, though, due to the Christmas and New Year holidays. With no work to occupy me, I’ve been thinking about my life ahead, and it feels pretty blank. Not sad, not tragic, not hopeless. Just blank. It never felt that way before.

What changed, for both of us? Why did life seem to have less “meaning”? When do people say they have or lack “meaning”?

Unable to Make Clear Decisions: “Is this Worth it?”

The main thing that changed recently for me was that I stopped having clear answers about what to do.

Friend: Although a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders, now I have other problems. I don’t know what to do? What is going to guide me in what I need to do? Should I go to the US? I don’t know. Should I stay in the Netherlands perhaps? I don’t know.

Earlier, I wanted to make a lot of money, prove myself as a competent programmer, and enjoy life in the U.S. So, I knew what I’d be doing for the rest of my life: work here till I got a green card and then enjoy my life here. But now I’m happy with the money I’ve got and with the programming work I’ve done so far. I don’t feel the need to earn tons more.

So, what should I do? I could live in the U.S. - it’d be fun but I’d have to work for a decade or longer just to have the privilege of staying here. I’d be sacrificing what’s left of my youth just to have a more comfortable life when I’m old and unable to enjoy as much. On the other hand, if I went back to India or some other country, I could enjoy my remaining youth right away, but I’d lose the chance to live for the rest of my life in the U.S. I can see pros and cons for both. I genuinely don’t know what to do here. And I’d hate to keep going along with my current path just because I can’t decide.

So, that’s a big part of what I mean by less “meaning”: I don’t have clear-cut answers to these questions.

Earlier, my friend and I believed that “effective altruism” was the most important thing ever, and any action towards it was worth it. I used to reject playing badminton with friends or learning to play the keyboard as not worth it. “I have bigger fish to fry,” I used to tell myself.

Now, I don’t have bigger fish to fry. This is all the fish there is. I only have so many years of life and those years are going to be spent doing mundane things, not “amazing”, “high-impact”, “world-saving” things. But those small-fry things feel like they’re small-fry - not worth it. Ok. Then what is worth it? I don’t have a clear answer.

I want to decide for the future without doubting myself constantly, getting paralyzed, or regretting every moment.

Note that the problem isn’t that I feel like I have more or less “meaning”. The problem is that I don’t take actions. Yes, I’m agonizing about my decision of where to stay or what to do for fun this evening or what to do on my vacation. But the feeling is just a byproduct, and not something I can control directly. The result is that I’m not deciding. What I really want to do is to take a decision that I don’t constantly regret.

Lack of “Meaning” is due to Lack of Constraints

Why aren’t other people agonizing as much about their decisions? Why don’t they feel as much of a lack of “meaning”?

People mostly have their decisions made for them. Parents, for example, can’t just decide to go off on a vacation for a month; it’s obvious that someone has to take care of the kids and pay for the house.

My friend and I, on the other hand, are unusually unsure about what to do because we have no strict, near-term constraint that is pushing us in any direction. My friend could work hard and live in the U.S. or he could chill and live where he is. He could marry or he could not. He could write essays or he could not. He could make any combination of those choices. How is he to know which is best, or even better than most?

We humans simply don’t have enough data (or ability) to foresee the consequences of our actions and figure out the “best” action. Nobody does (or can do) expected utility calculations.

When we have external constraints, our decisions are simple and there is little room for doubt or regret. When we don’t have external constraints, we have a lot of doubt about our decisions. We feel unsure. We feel like we don’t have a “purpose” in life. We think we could be doing something much better, even though we don’t know what.

Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most people have no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but those who like what they do. So a plan that promises freedom at the expense of knowing what to do with it may not be as good as it seems.

– Paul Graham, How to Do What You Love

Throughout my life, I used to have crystal-clear criteria for what is “worth” it and what is not. Studying to get into a top college - “worth” it. Going out with my close friends - “worth” it. Bursting firecrackers on the festival of Diwali - not “worth” it. Going to family functions - not “worth” it. Surfing the web - not “worth” it (but I did it anyway). This was all because I cared a lot more about acing exams. If I “wasted” time on family functions, I would not be able to study as much for my college entrance exam. The same went for picking up musical instruments or reading novels - these would take time away from my main goal. The overarching constraint of “ace the entrance exam” made all of my decisions no-brainers.

It was the same with “effective altruism”. The massive, “life-saving” impact of this “altruism” obviously outweighed anything else in life. Want to spend a month lazing around and doing stuff you love? No, you could be saving lives! Want to major in a less lucrative field you love? No, you could be earning tons more elsewhere and saving more lives! So, this giant constraint made decisions easy (though hard to swallow).

Once the constraint of saving maximum lives went away, the field was wide open. Life was available to us again. Unfortunately, this meant we had to decide what to do. No wonder I felt like everything was blank. It was. I needed to paint on the blank canvas.

What Now?

“Meaning”, in the sense of clear decisions without regret, comes from constraints. Nobody can compute the best actions for the future. People rely on existing constraints to simplify their decisions, and they usually have a lot of constraints. This suggests that, to feel like we have “meaning”, we need to add constraints, not just remove them.

But we don’t want to add random constraints, especially not the conventional ones we’ve worked hard to overthrow (such as needing to get promotions or two kids or a big house). What to do? How to design our constraints, our decisions, our lives? Once we have constraints, how to actually take lots of action and feel excited about things?

To be continued.