It’s all distractions. Pick a good distraction.
Death lurks on the far horizon, distracting us and hustling us along, and perhaps tends to bias us toward the "stop worrying and get on with it before you go belly-up" point of view. Which is a shame, but practical.
A lot of "thinking-about-meaning" for me has transformed into fatalism. I firmly believe that our cognitive faculties demand a higher purpose, though I can't define what that purpose is. I disassemble my thought process, and prod deeper into my logical functions as to why I'm drawn to certain conclusions. At some point, I realize that I need to combat shortcomings and psychological "self-tricks" my mind instinctively employs. I'm prone to wanting shortcuts. In fact, I think this is the default state of non-abberant human thought. Visually, your eyes can hallucinate in the form of optical illusions where it employs predictive generated information based on patterns. Intuitively, you come to a conclusion because you've experienced proximity to similarity. But similarities are not, by definition, identical. In this delta lies all of humanity's greatest accomplishments, exploits, and suffering.
And in this I come to address the fundamental problem of "thinking-about-meaning". We draw experience from similarities, but we don't have a definitive state of 'singularity'. This is the barrier of human thought. You face the insurmountable variance of uncertainty. Cursed to cobble together primitive inference. Barely navigating this incomprehensible reality. You will never have a satisfying answer. You will always be isolated. You will always be alone. You will never be able to 'truly' share this experience with anyone else. And in here we long for comfort the most. We share wisdom and aphorisms. Our little 'shortcuts' in life.
"The young do not know what they have".
"Sex is not all that it's cracked up to be".
"The body is the prison of the soul".
Futility? Perhaps. But we sure are driven to iterate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i found meaning in the idea that the purpose of the existence of humanity itself is to carry forward an ever advancing civilization.
that means that we work together to make life better for everyone. this can mean raising children, but it also has room for many other activities and contributions that don't involve having children of your own.
having found a satisfactory answer, i don't think about meaning, but i focus on my role in the world to fulfill that purpose, while dealing with my own needs and shortcomings.
In particular, concern that taking on a great task might demote the prominence of or drive for thinking-about-meaning in one’s life seems to me a sign of having gotten a bit lost in the woods and seeing only trees, if you will.
I think that sort of activity makes a better prologue and occasional footnote than it does a story, and that doing is both greater and much harder than thinking—which is why centering thought per se is such tempting bait. Many great thinkers warn of this :-)
Having meaning beats seeking meaning—the latter’s not much of an end, and doing less of it for having occupied oneself with meaning isn’t a loss.