Questions · Human Questions
If life has no pre-given meaning, how do I live?
Direct answer
Having no pre-written meaning is not the same as having no meaning at all. Sheng's "becoming is its own reason" first removes one demand: life does not need to receive a purpose issued by the universe before it is entitled to happen. Your living, relating, choosing, enduring, and creating do not hold only because there was first a final instruction manual. Meaning can be born within the concrete happening of life, rather than only being collected from outside it.
Further explanation
This loosens the pressure of "I must find the one correct answer for my life." You can still have goals, commitments, and value judgments; you just do not need to declare any one of them the shared, eternal, single external purpose of all life.
Core concepts
Primary sources
Conclusions that must not be drawn
Do not reduce this to nihilism, and do not prescribe one single life value for everyone.
Related phrasings
How do I live without a destined meaning in life?Why live if the universe has no purpose?Does having no ultimate meaning equal nihilism?
Natural phrasings of the same semantic domain, used for retrieval and understanding; the page does not pile up near-duplicate content.