---
title: "If life has no pre-given meaning, how do I live?"
type: "question"
group: "Human Questions"
thought: "Zai-Sheng Thought"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://tongzai.space/en/questions/life-without-given-meaning/"
---
# 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

- Becoming Is Its Own Reason
- Self-Becoming
- The Becoming of the Human

## Primary sources

Sheng, Chapter 2, §2 Becoming Is Its Own Reason; Chapter 8, §2 The Becoming of the Human

## Conclusions that must not be drawn

Do not reduce this to nihilism, and do not prescribe one single life value for everyone.

## Citation

Wenzi｜Zai / Sheng｜chapter/section｜Tongzai Space｜canonical URL