Late Night Fiction Avoiding the “kool-aid” everyone likes so much

Assigning Meaning

When you break everything down in life, you soon learn that nothing in life has an inherent meaning. I might've said this before, but now I'll take it a step further.

The only fool-proof way to have meaning to anything in your life is to assign a meaning to it. By the time you're the age you currently are, reading this, you've already assigned meaning to many things; fairly universal objects you've assigned meaning to would be money, time, your mortality, family, possibly spirituality, etc. But what about those things you don't quite have down so much as these? A common phrase I hear is "I'm [so many] years old and I still don't know what I want."

The truth is you'll never know. In fact, you'll never know anything for sure in your lifetime.¹ Scary thought, possibly, but in this case it is a matter of choosing-- realizing that ultimately, all the decisions you make come down to you. Confidence is such an envied personality trait because it take a certain kind of individual to be so certain of oneself. Anyone who has this trait has had the balls to disregard external forces for one second, make a decision on what he/she likes, and just go with it. The same is required when deciding what you want.

On a personal note, when you break existence down as much as I have, you get to the point where you have all the pieces spread out before you and the only thing left to do is find out what to do with them, because they do you no good on their own. This is probably where the cliché "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"² comes from.³

Some people are content working 9 to 5 all their life, retiring, and dying at a "reasonable" age. Some would rather do what they want to regardless of the standard. Some want kids, some don't want to get married. Some people believe in a higher power, some don't. These are all examples of different assigned meanings, each one specific to the individual who created them; it's in our nature.