Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?

[Excited Penguin]

Psychologists say you have to decide to be happy first, not keep looking for something over the horizon.

I'm happy. I have food and shelter, clothes and many luxuries like tv, video games, etc. I read books and sew shenanigans I can. I'm often disturbed by what feel like random thoughts on the futility and meaninglessness of it all, but I do my best to ignore them. Even if true, then thoughts on meaninglessness are meaningless. I'm here, I'm capable of enjoyment, and giving enjoyment to others, so wtf, just do that!

You can swim in the ocean's turbulent waters as well as fly a plane above them. You don't have to settle for either, no matter the weather. You can also go on land when you tire of the adventure.

Did I do well, Ark?

[Excited Penguin]

I was trying to explore whether or not meaning was ultimately what I'm looking for.  I was seeing whether having the maximum possible meaning in my life is what I really want.

And whether you approach it as a quantity of experiences or quality of overall experience and function.

What is the most meaningful function/experience of a lump of coal? To be burned/transformed to release energy? Or energy to be used on it to compress it's loose carbon into crystal diamond?

I think what me and the OP are looking for is the second option, if I'm understanding your analogy in a way you would agree with.

[Excited Penguin]

InquiringMind, please, please don't let anyone here change you. And stick around. Some of us, well, I, appreciate you.

[Faith No More]

Meaning is all relative anyway. I'm sure a starving kid from Africa whose parents were murdered by child soldiers would find plenty of it if they could suddenly have your life.

Sink your teeth into that next time you're wishing you were immortal.

[Angrboda]

I know you're not a fan of evolutionary psychology, so I'll just present this as my own pet theory for you to speculate on.

In my view, complex biological beings inhabit one of two modes, and they alternate between the two. The first is conservation--doing what one already knows works; this results in stasis, but only if the environment remains constant, and does not produce novel challenges. The other mode is one of exploration--doing new things and seeking out novelties; this mode is designed to allow us to adapt to new circumstances in which our old behaviors fail to suffice. The mode of conservation is productive, because we know that--failing changes in the environment--it will produce predictable results. The mode of exploration is not so lucrative; many experiments will fail; only a few produce. So what is the point of the exploratory mode? It allows us to adapt to changes in our environment by acquiring new behaviors. The conservative mode is productive, but it is also vulnerable because old answers may not suffice in a new environment. Thus we are split, between being conservative and being exploratory. The organism has a drive to engage in both modes as those organisms which only drove toward conservatism exclusively, or exploration exclusively, did not prosper as much as those that engaged both of these dual behaviors. The one eventually yields to the other. When we are sated, we become anxious that we are missing something. When we experience the failures of exploration, we long to be sated. We live an alteration between being satisfied and one of being unfulfilled. I believe that this is our fate. That is my theory.

Thus we will never obtain complete meaning as we will by nature alternate between consolidating meaning and adapting our behaviors to new circumstances. We will vacillate between conservation and exploration, so worrying about what to do once meaning is achieved is somewhat pointless, imo, as peace of mind will be fleeting, if at all achievable.

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There is also the hedonic treadmill to be considered.

The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness. Brickman and Campbell coined the term in their essay "Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society" (1971). During the late 1990s, the concept was modified by Michael Eysenck, a British psychologist, to become the current "hedonic treadmill theory" which compares the pursuit of happiness to a person on a treadmill, who has to keep walking just to stay in the same place. The concept dates back centuries, to such writers as St. Augustine, cited in Robert Burton's 1621 Anatomy of Melancholy: "A true saying it is, Desire hath no rest, is infinite in itself, endless, and as one calls it, a perpetual rack, or horse-mill."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

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One might ask the question of why pursue satisfaction if we can never truly achieve it? I would say, seek to be content, and find satisfaction as it arises. But be not concerned that despair visits more oft than one would want. The path is never straight. Do not be alarmed that it twists and turns on its way.

Do you think the ideal of immortality can be experienced as an immediate thing that one lives? I am an ex-Hindu, so I'm not acquainted with living as though one would live forever. Do you think that your Mormon road of believing yourself immortal could persuade continuously throughout your entire life? I find myself skeptical that immortality can salve the needs of a concrete, living man or woman. It seems too much the stuff of fantasy that must eventually fade. Is that the hedonic treadmill again? As a Hindu, the continuation of this existence was what was to be feared, as immortality only leads to endless struggle. Given my beliefs about conservation and exploration, I find the idea of an eternal existence more stultifying than not. Perhaps that is the lack you experience--that the road is no longer limitless, and in fact, is not even smoothly paved.

[Angrboda]

The thirst, once quenched, will only wait a little while before it is thirsty again.

So keep digging your internal well of meaning until you hit the water table or a spring.

I hit a geothermal pocket and I'm still waiting for the waters to cool to be of much use to anyone else.

Well, you've certainly hit a wellspring of some sort.

[Angrboda]

Now, Abraham and Kierkegaard were both in exceptional situations; most of us are not called upon to make such drastic sacrifices. But even the most ordinary people are required from time to time to make decisions crucial for their own lives, and in such crises they know something of the “suspension of the ethical” of which Kierkegaard writes. For the choice in such human situations is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the ultimate outcome and even—or most of all—our own motives are unclear to us. The terror of confronting oneself in such a situation is so great that most people panic and try to take cover under any universal rule that will apply, if only it will save them from the task of choosing themselves. Unfortunately, in a good many cases there is no such universal rule or recipe available, and the individual can do nothing but muddle through on his own and decide for himself. Life seems to have intended it this way, for no moral blueprint has ever been drawn up that covers all the situations for us beforehand so that we can be absolutely certain under which rule the situation comes. Such is the concreteness of existence that a situation may come under several rules at once, forcing us to choose outside any rule, and from inside ourselves.

Barrett, William. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (pp. 167-168). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[Arkilogue]

Psychologists say you have to decide to be happy first, not keep looking for something over the horizon.

I'm happy. I have food and shelter, clothes and many luxuries like tv, video games, etc. I read books and sew shenanigans I can. I'm often disturbed by what feel like random thoughts on the futility and meaninglessness of it all, but I do my best to ignore them. Even if true, then thoughts on meaninglessness are meaningless. I'm here, I'm capable of enjoyment, and giving enjoyment to others, so wtf, just do that!

You can swim in the ocean's turbulent waters as well as fly a plane above them. You don't have to settle for either, no matter the weather. You can also go on land when you tire of the adventure.

Did I do well, Ark?

You're speaking to my heart!

One can only think about meaning so much....ultimately it must be felt and this is a courageous reaching through darkness. Not a leap of faith, but a step by step walk of purpose.

[Edwardo Piet]

live it?

^^^^

This.

[Arkilogue]

And whether you approach it as a quantity of experiences or quality of overall experience and function.

What is the most meaningful function/experience of a lump of coal? To be burned/transformed to release energy? Or energy to be used on it to compress it's loose carbon into crystal diamond?

I think what me and the OP are looking for is the second option, if I'm understanding your analogy in a way you would agree with.

Think we're feeling in the same direction

In my analogy the "burning" would translate to a hedonistic type life seeking high quantity of "extreme" type experiences. This would include adrenaline junkies and horders of money. The danger comes from it's innate temporarily and unquenchable nature.

The second option is energy put into the system in the form of self discipline either self imposed or by an authority figure. The atomic lattice of a diamond is highly regular and uniform, it's own internal structure does not impede the flow of light. This amounts to an integrity that allows clear perception of what passes through oneself...the light is clear perception. A lump of coal is perception obstructing.