Because It's There

I went looking for meaning in blogging the other day—specifically, meaning in MY blogging. And it appears that last December was an unusually meaningful month for me, as several grandiosely pretentious blatherings from that timeframe can attest ... but more on that in a moment.

The reason I embarked on this particular quest was that I'd been inspired by YET ANOTHER blog link that The ListMaker had sent me. She's got hella talent for tracking down deliciously insightful and decadently hilarious writings, and my RSS subscription list grows as if it were being fed with the electronic equivalent of Miracle-Gro®, almost entirely through HER influence.

Anyway, here's the entry that set me off, although let me be abundantly clear that when I say "set off," I mean it in a Very Good way, and not at all like when I start talking about William A. Donohue (for a seasonally- and meaningfully-appropriate example).

What I liked most about this blog entry is how I agreed with its totality, and yet managed to disagree with parts of it. (Apparently, I get quite a bit of contrarian pleasure out of that sort of situation.) I agree that life "isn't about anything," and I agree that finding meaning in life is "not a contest." I was ABSOLUTELY SMITTEN by the quotation from Steve Jobs (please read it in the context of the blog entry referred to above, and then in its own original context, as cited therein), and I snickered over the idea of "mid-blog crisising," which I indulge in on a roughly weekly basis.

This sort of stuff is like ice cream for my brain, drizzled with maple syrup, and topped with full-fat Cool Whip® ... and don't knock it if you haven't tried it; it's like sex in a bowl, but I digress.

To get within spitting range of the point, though, while I do not see life as having any inherent meaning, I fully sympathize with those who infuse or search for meaning in it anyway. And not just because I'm one of those freaky sorts, although that obviously has something to do with it.

The thing about meaning is that it's subjective—actually, it's worse than that! Meaning is both subjective and relative, as may be demonstrated by simply asking a group of people what means to them. It pretty much doesn't matter what you pick—either in terms of research subjects or topics of discussion—because you're just not going to get all the same answers.

Hell, it works with life itself! At least one person reading this (and yes, let's do assume there's more than one person reading this, because otherwise my analogy just got shot to shit) positively cringed when they read "I do not see life as having any inherent meaning." Some people not only do not "believe" this, they KNOW it's 100% wrong.

And therein lies the point. Whether or not life is meaningless, if we find meaning regardless, meaning DOES exist. It doesn't translate from one person to another, necessarily, and you certainly can't use it to buy a box of chocolate, but it's there nonetheless. But because I agree that there's no "objective" meaning in life, and no way to keep score of meaningfulness anyway, it's worth pondering—to me, which is why I am continuing to do it—why I persist in seeking meaning in the first place.

I'd like to take the easy way out and say that I don't think I COULD stop, even if I wanted to, but I don't think that's strictly true, even if giving up my addiction to wondering and philosophizing and rhapsodizing myself silly over it all would make quitting smoking look as simple as going "PPPHHHBBBTTTT!" Then I could just write it off as some genetic defect, over which I have no control.

But as much as my pursuance of meaning may seem to be an innately fueled fire, I don't think that's so much the case. I think that there's at least a factor of choice, a mental determination to MAKE things mean stuff, because I want to find worth and purpose, because deep down, I not only believe that it matters—whatever "it" is—but I KNOW that it does.

I find meaning in blogging because I want to, certainly. But I also find it because it's there. And that's good enough for me.