Hey there,

I've been procrastinating on this newsletter for weeks. Not because I ran out of ideas or didn't enjoy writing. No -- it was more because my perceived speed of life had accelerated like an illegally tuned drag race car. On Thursday nights, I would sit at my desk and think, "Eh, I'll write it next Thursday" -- but before I knew it, the next Thursday would roll around, and the next, and the next.

But, at last, here I am, breaking the cycle by writing this on a Friday. Ha, take that, past self!

Before unpacking today's idea, I have two exciting announcements:

1. My book club, The Bibliosopher's Club, goes into its second season with no other book than Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. It's hands-down the best book I read this year. Rarely has there been a book that affected my way of being and perceiving the world so deeply. You can check out the details here.
   (Also, if you want to catch up on all ten chapter deep-dives from our last book, Dopamine Nation, and unlock future bonus content, you can still become a patron and secure a 30% lifetime discount until October 2nd!)
2. My Medium Day talks are now available on YouTube. At first, the cringe of re-watching myself was unbearable, but then I noticed I didn't come across as a hyper-nervous shipwreck and actually expressed what I wanted to express. So, I dare say that I'm proud as punch of how these three talks turned out:
   • ​What nobody taught you about loneliness​
   • ​What we get wrong about minimalism​
   • ​Should you write under a pen name? (And why I killed mine)​
   • You can find all the other talks from many marvelous speakers in this playlist.

How to cope with a meaning crisis (and make life more meaningful)

If you're a long-time follower of my writings, you might know I'm prone to slipping into existential crises. Sometimes, they have a specific cause. For instance, when I overly draw meaning from one thing (a relationship, work project, or hobby), and then, suddenly, that thing ceases to exist. But other times, it comes out of nowhere -- while loading the dishwasher, watching the sunset, sitting on the train.

In any case, all those funky questions erupt in my mind like a long overdue volcano. What's it all about? What am I doing with my life? And anyway, won't we all be dead in the long run? What's the purpose of anything?

Historically, religion has answered these questions (and, of course, it still does for some people). But today, in our increasingly secularized culture, many people (myself included) just rock-n-roll through life, trying to sidestep these questions as if they were dog poop. Sure, capitalism tries to give us answers by baiting us with money, fame, and status. But we know very well that these are short fixes, shallow answers.

And still.

We desperately need to answer questions on meaning and purpose -- that is, if we want life to be meaningful, full of meaning. Knowing our meaning -- our why -- simply makes life suck less. As the Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl puts it aptly: “In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

So, how do we cope with a meaning crisis in an endlessly bureaucratized and estranged world? How can we figure out the immensely tricky question about the meaning of life when we're left on our own? I've repeatedly stumbled upon a rather unusual answer:

We should give up.

I don't mean this as giving up on playing the game of life altogether. But more as giving up on analyzing strategies and, instead, starting to play.

One of the most seminal advocates of this take is the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. In his piece The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus discusses, well, Sisyphus -- the guy from Greek mythology who was condemned to rolling a rock uphill for eternity. How does Sisyphus, the man sentenced to the most meaningless task imaginable, find meaning?

Camus writes:

The way I interpret Camus is that the question of the meaning of life is pointless because the point is to live the question. The point is to accept that life is absurd and immerse ourselves in whatever it has to offer. Whatever is in front of us. Even if it's a rock.

Camus ends the essay with arguably one of the most famous lines of modern philosophy:

Why should Sisyphus be happy?

I think he's happy precisely because he keeps pushing his rock. "His rock is his thing," as Camus puts it. Sisyphus knows every grain of his rock, all the dull dents and sharp edges. We can imagine he's committed to figuring out the best way to push his rock up the hill, watch it roll down again, and walk back to the bottom. Sisyphus is happy because he isn't as much concerned with the meaning of life as the inevitable task in front of him.

In this sense, reflection is simply the wrong tool to answer the meaning of life. A more appropriate tool is immersion.

Matt Haig writes about the same idea in his Comfort Book (except he's packaging it far more pithy than I could):

Or imagine you're standing at the edge of a wonderfully blue mountain lake. You're thinking, "I wonder how cold the water is. What it would feel like to jump in. Would it be freezing? Would I be able to jump in? Is the ground muddy?"

These considerations would be the equivalent of Sisyphus brooding on the purpose of his rock. Once again, reflection is the wrong tool. The only way to find out what mountain lakes feel like is to submerge ourselves in them. How long do we need to keep brooding on the meaning of life until we allow ourselves to live?

But my favorite take on this topic, by far, comes from Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha:

While reading all this, you probably didn't wonder why I used X word or Y punctuation (provided I didn't produce word salad). No, instead, you're letting yourself -- in this very moment! -- carry by the words. You're flowing in a river of letters, words, sentences, paragraphs. And you effortlessly absorb their meaning.

Searching for the meaning of life in an absurd world demands us to do the same. We must stop deciphering every last venture and start absorbing what's right here, right now.

It's counterintuitive but perhaps not surprising that we don't make life more meaningful by endlessly wondering how we might find purpose. We make life more meaningful by immersing ourselves in it. By rolling the rock. By eating the toast.

By living.

Until next time,

Stephan

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