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Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
#1
Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
This is a spin-off of my other threads about meaning, but I think it deserves its own thread.  Here's a thought experiment: why is "meaning" valuable in the first place?  Why should I care about meaning?

Let's say (to create a hypothetical scenario) that I have a superlatively meaningful life.  Let's say I have a life that is just oozing with meaning.  Let's say that this is my day: I get up in the morning and eat a meaningful breakfast.  I walk out to my car, and my car has deep meaning for me.  I drive my meaningful car on a route to work that is profoundly meaningful.  I get to work, and it's difficult to describe how profoundly meaningful, satisfying, and and fulfilling my job is.  I spend eight meaningful hours at my meaningful job, where I get to do meaningful tasks that bring meaning to myself and the people who are meaningful to me.  My job is so meaningful that I become overwhelmed and cry several times at the profoundness of the meaning that my job gives me.  I then get back in my meaningful car and take my meaningful drive home.  I arrive home and kiss my wife.  Unlike the kisses of people who are just looking for pleasure, this kiss actually means something.  I eat a meaningful dinner, and me and the wife and the kids have a meaningful conversation about meaningful things that really mean something in the world.  Then I help the kids with their homework, and helping them is meaningful for me, because my relationship with them is so meaningful and because the stuff they're studying in school is so profound and meaningful.  Then the kids go to bed, and me and my wife make love in way that is not just pleasurable, but meaningful.  Then I slip off into a peaceful and meaningful sleep that is filled with meaningful dreams.  

So let's say that's my day.  Let's say I'm living a life that is infused with meaning.  A life that is oozing with meaning.  A life that is overwhelmingly meaningful.  But now I have a new problem - what do I do next?  Now that I have achieved a meaningful life, what do I do with this super ultra uber meaningful life?  If I've got so much meaning in my life that I have to rent extra storage space to store all of the extra meaning, what do I do next with my life?
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#2
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
You want more than that?

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#3
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
live it?
“Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?” 
― Tom StoppardRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
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#4
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
The thirst, once quenched, will only wait a little while before it is thirsty again.
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#5
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
Another chain yanker. I have a very difficult time accepting that any of this is sincere.
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#6
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
You live and learn, of course. It ain't rocket surgery.

Of course, you'll have to define "meaning" for yourself in a cogent form. The way you're using it here makes me think you don't understand what it is for yourself, what with the scoffing tone and all.

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#7
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
(September 24, 2016 at 1:57 pm)ukatheist Wrote: You want more than that?

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Yeah, I do.  For some reason, even with a meaningful life, I feel like there's something more out there, something I want and can't get.

(September 24, 2016 at 2:06 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: The thirst, once quenched, will only wait a little while before it is thirsty again.

This does seem to be true.  Maybe it's like money, where people who have money only seem to want more money.  Having meaning doesn't make me stop wanting more meaning.

(September 24, 2016 at 2:07 pm)Cato Wrote: Another chain yanker. I have a very difficult time accepting that any of this is sincere.

No, this is a real question.
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#8
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
Meaningful to you is one thing.

Meaningful to everyone and everything around you and all that comes after you is a whole 'nother ball game.
"Leave it to me to find a way to be,
Consider me a satellite forever orbiting,
I knew the rules but the rules did not know me, guaranteed." - Eddie Vedder
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#9
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
(September 24, 2016 at 2:10 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Of course, you'll have to define "meaning" for yourself in a cogent form. The way you're using it here makes me think you don't understand what it is for yourself, what with the scoffing tone and all.

It's possibly true that here I'm treating "meaning" as a commodity, and that I'm speaking of meaning using economic language, as if it could acquired, bought, and sold.  But is this really unjustified given our zeitgeist, which largely uses economic models to describe human life?  Everything from relationships and sex to religion and politics is spoken of in terms of "costs and benefits" and "supply and demand."  In a world where behavioral economics is the "cutting-edge" model for explaining why people do what they do, is it really wrong to speak of maximizing my sense of meaning in life, and to compare whether I have more meaning than other people do?
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#10
RE: Let's Say I Achieve "Meaning." What Do I Do Next?
(September 24, 2016 at 2:06 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: 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.
"Leave it to me to find a way to be,
Consider me a satellite forever orbiting,
I knew the rules but the rules did not know me, guaranteed." - Eddie Vedder
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