Meaning is a difficult word.
There’s the everyday definition, i.e what one thing means or denotes.
i.e. gracias means thank you, generally.
The idea of symbolic meaning is malleable.
Something happens to us and we decide it means this or that.
A guy hits you could mean to you that life is dangerous. We tell ourselves stories about the world
based on what happens or what we perceive, which is never complete, so we have to
create meaning, i.e. order, in the chaos. In this, meaning is a creative process, that can be conscious or unconscious on
a continuum. A conscious meaning maker is like an artist, who constructs meaning using values as the measure.
I.e. if I value pleasure instead of pain, generally, my effort will be or “mean” a war against pain, both my own and others’.
If I have no war, code, or agenda, or no values that I choose or that choose me, the word “meaningless” feels apropos,
not in that there’s no meaning, but that I don’t know WHAT my life means, in the absence of one of those things mentioned
above. Surely it means something, but “meaningless” is generally used to denote a “meaning” that has a value that is unclear or
suspect.
Then there’s universal meaning, i.e. the “meaning” of life.
If there’s a God who created us against a standard or goal, then our life “means” an effort or picture that is held
against or contributing to that goal. If God didn’t create us and there’s no outside or extrinsic force interpreting what our
actions “mean” then we are the ones figuring out what life means, which is fine. It just means our meaning will be somewhat made up,
because unlike an omniscient God, we don’t have access to all the facts that go into the complete, comprehensive meaning of what’s all going on.
I’ve thought long and hard about this and here’s what I think life means:
You run around and do a bunch of shit, say a bunch of shit, and literally shit a bunch of shit, and then you die having no clue what the fuck all that seeing and hearing and thinking/feeling and being a body in time and space was all about. And you fall into a deep dreamless sleep and other people (and bugs, and animals, and possibly trees, and Aliens like Galactus, and definitely dolphins) think the universe, cause the universe ain’t gonna think itself, although that’s exactly what it’s doing, in separate little windowless nodules connected by communication, like this piece of writing.
On many days I’ve thought that meaning is a form of pudding. Not chocolate pudding. More like Black Pudding, from D&D. But also banana pudding. JELL-O brand.