Someone asked me recently “what makes life worth living to you?” Here’s my (current working theory) response:
I think you create your own meaning, and part of finding/creating yourself is figuring out what makes life meaningful for YOU and then pursuing it!
The answer will be different for everyone – I’m sure we’ve all had the experience where you share a song that’s suuuuuuuuper meaningful to you and you’re looking at them expectantly like “isn’t this amazing???” and they’re like “eh, it’s ok.”
I think that’s part of why experimentation is so important to knowing yourself, and why so many ex-mormons go crazy with it. You don’t start out magically knowing what makes you tick, what makes your heart sing. For instance, I had no idea how much I loved hard rock/heavy metal concerts til I went to one, and now I look forward to them months in advance! If I’d never tried one, I never would have known they’d become such a big part of my life! But they’re not for everyone, and so it is with anything else that makes my life meaningful to me. There is no one right way to human. Sorry, there are no one-size-fits-all answers (besides, I guess, simple ones like “don’t be a dick”, but even those sometimes have exceptions), and you’re gonna have to make your best guess at your own answer, just like every other human that came before you. Such is the blessing and curse of being (as far as we know) the only self-aware species on the planet.
Simply put, you don’t know what you don’t know, and until you try as many things as possible you don’t know what you like and dislike, and I think that’s what it means to “know yourself”. I think the only way I’ve been able to “discover myself” post-Mormonism has been through trial and error after “living safe” all those years – I’ve had tons of new experiences, and some I’ve loved, and others I’ve hated, and it’s all good data about myself!
I think we manufacture our own individual meaning in our own subjective realities within our own individual brains. It’s all perception, nerve impulses and brain chemistry (and perhaps the magic of consciousness) in the end. None of us know what it’s like to live in another skull, none of us can truly see the world through a different lens. It’s kind of amazing humans can understand each other as much as they do.
