Life suddenly had no meaning
One of the things that I have struggled with in my deconstruction and subsequent deconversion is the issue of meaning. You could ask my closest confidants, and they would have told you that I had a profound crisis of meaning that deeply affected my day-to-day living.
It is one of the reasons I was plagued with suicidal thoughts for several years when I started aggressively deconstructing my inherited beliefs.
One of the things I struggled with was my deeply destructive nihilistic tendencies. (Which I have since discovered came from my Christian belief system, which will get its own post in the future).
I asked myself:
“If there is no God, where does meaning come from?”
Frankly, the conclusion that I was forced to give for some time was that there is no meaning at all. I had already deconstructed my conception of God, and I could not reasonably convince myself that I still believed in some kind of divine entity (Even if some days I did feel God, I was unable to rely on that conviction). So the option of having some cosmic being provide meaning for me was unavailable.
While therapy helped me considerably in areas outside this central philosophical plague, I was still haunted by this idea of meaninglessness.
What good was any of this self-work, as good as it is, if at the end of the day it would all be dust? Was a persistent thought in the shadow of my mind.
For a couple of years, I went on autopilot. Mostly to keep my existing relationships intact, my job, and other things necessary for living. I refused to allow my inner turmoil boil over into the things that I knew affected other people. Though it did deeply affect my marriage, simply because she saw the lowest points of my life. If it weren’t for her, I would likely be drinking myself to death somewhere.
I do not think that I would’ve lasted much longer on that trajectory. I was spread so thinly and tightly that a small needle could’ve ruptured the canvas.
The Epiphany That Saved my Life
By chance, on a spiritual deconstruction discord that I am a part of, I was in conversation with someone about existentialism and nihilism. I typically avoided those conversations as they were extremely triggering and would cause me intense panic attacks.
However, he guided me through some of the more positive existentialist philosophies. Because of this, I had something of an epiphany.
Life is not a pre-selection of courses from a cosmic chef, but rather a buffet of things that I get to choose.
In other words, as I understand it, because I can choose what is meaningful to me, I have inherent meaning. I am the ultimate source of meaning (in my own life). He phrased it as “hopepunk nihilism.”
While it sounds silly to write it down, it was the conversation that finally allowed me to pass beyond the veil of depressive nihilism. It didn’t happen all at once, but it was the type of conversation that allowed me to move forward again. If very slowly at first.
I have come to understand that we, as humans, are unique in that we are the ultimate arbiters of what matters and what does not matter.
That is not to say that we are above certain things, such as care or empathy for one another and the world, for example. But it is to say that we (as far as we currently know) are the only species capable of observing the universe and giving it meaning. It would be a tragedy to take away anyone or anything that would detract from that beauty.
It is in this way that we matter. That our decisions matter. Not because the Divine told us that it does based on its arbitrary feelings, but because our decisions and what we choose to give meaning to will affect the world in ways that we cannot imagine.
Final Thoughts
I hope he reads this post, though I will likely personally tag him so he understands how impactful that conversation was (if he even remembers it). But I cannot express how freeing that conversation was in allowing me to finally break the bonds of a religion that had shackled my mind in nihilistic thinking.
Since that conversation, I have explored philosophical and spiritual things I would never have pursued before. Frankly, that journey has filled me with a sense of meaning I did not expect. A journey, I am becoming more aware, that may never end.
It has fulfilled me in a way that religion never did, or could. That is not to say all religion is bad or not fulfilling, but it is to say that there are many viable paths to take. Ones that actually make sense to me and my own intuition.
Quote for Today
“A Journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. that we will hurt those ones around us. But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination. To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step is always the next one.”
- Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive.
