The Subtle Meaning of Life
A wrestler, war vet and media buyer walk into a bar
I have a lot of draft articles on my computer. Whenever I start writing, I revisit some of these, and, when doing so, it’s harder for me to come up with new ideas.
Sometimes I’ll start writing an entire article only to rethink it later. Other times I’ll write two or three lines and change my mind.
I just opened one of my drafts to find the following:
I’m forcing myself to write something. A woman wearing strong, cheap perfume is sitting next to me at this cafe, and I want to vomit.
I have no idea what I sat down to write that day, but it certainly wasn’t a journal about my surroundings and how I feel about them (even though that’s what it often turns into).
My writing problems continued through yesterday until a chance encounter in the middle of the night made me rethink things.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
I’ve been in Tbilisi for nearly two and a half years. In that time I’ve visited many different bars in town where I met all kinds of characters, including musicians from England and refugees from Iran.
I thought I knew all the spots where expats and immigrants were hanging out. However, there remained one bar that I hadn’t visited.
I showed up at this bar last night and immediately ran into an acquaintance that I had met at a party over a year ago. We went to the same university and have a similar background having both grown up in America with Eastern European roots.
More people came, other Americans, and a few Russians. And then there was a forty-something American guy whose story was unlike anybody else’s. He lived in California and was visiting Tbilisi on his way to a work-related engagement in Armenia. He was bald with cauliflower ears and wore a denim jacket and jeans.
He made his way around the bar, chatting with almost everybody. One of the guys in our group struck up a conversation with him as he was getting a drink. Next thing I knew, he was sitting with us.
He started talking about his time Greco-Roman wrestling when he was a student. Fighting sports are big in Georgia, and we were hypothesizing about why Georgia and neighboring countries are so good at wrestling and other fighting sports (I think it comes down to culture).
We them learned about his six tours in Afghanistan, beginning shortly after September 11, 2001. I grew up hearing stories about people who had nothing to do with the army enlisting after having witnessed the attacks, but I never actually met someone like that. This guy did it.
He told us about the kinds of operations he participated in in Afghanistan (I’d rather not describe them here).
I got up for a few minutes, and when I returned, he was in the middle of explaining that he is an ad buyer on adult websites – he is responsible for matching sketchy products with ad space on sketchy websites.
What Does This Have To Do With Meaning?
This isn’t just a story about a crazy character in a bar. I’ve met dozens of these types throughout my life (I’m a magnet for characters).
I think it’s admirable that this guy had a strong conviction about something and acted on it with no regrets.
While I never fought in Afghanistan or managed advertisements on adult websites, I’ve taken massive action before, selling everything and moving to the other side of the world to open a business that was financially doomed from the start.
I’ve had a rough couple of months, applying for jobs and trying to figure out the next steps in my life. This week I went down a YouTube rabbit hole about stoicism and the search for meaning.
I had read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning when I was a freshman in university, but I now realize that I wasn’t yet ready to understand the meaning of this book.
Someone close to me recently read the book, and we were discussing it. The point of life, according to Frankl, is to manufacture it yourself. You can’t sit around and hope that the outside world will act and give you meaning. You must make it up.
Grappling with these ideas again has made me realize that my search for meaning is over.
I am now going to manufacture meaning for myself.
No Need to Change Location
I think some people have a strong desire to leave their current location whenever things go wrong. I come from a long line of people who have moved around. In some ways I am reliving my ancestors’ immigrant experience, whether from the Pale of Settlement to the big cities of the Russian Empire or to the United States and other Western countries.
I moved to New York at eighteen years old without any life experience. Now that I’ve seen a thing or two, it wouldn’t make sense to start from scratch again at twenty-six.
I’m not going to find meaning in a new city or country anymore. My journey to Georgia has taught me that meaning is something you have to choose for yourself.
The reality is that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for meaning. Some people find it through work, others through spirituality and others through connection with people.
My mother was as a doctor her entire working life and based her entire identity on this.
It was the Soviet Union in the 1980s; medicines and treatments were rationed, and difficult decisions had to be made about who was going to be treated and who was going to be left to die.
It was only in America that her expertise was valued by those around her. She could now treat everyone without worry about running out of medicines or hospital beds. She could also be compensated accordingly.
I’ve concluded that I won’t find meaning from work. Work is fundamentally good, especially if you’re helping people, but I can’t invest my whole identity into it.
Art is not it either. I’m kind of over it, and I’m not the best cultural ambassador, and that’s okay.
Writing is closer to meaning for me. Even though I have tremendous reservations about publishing about very person issues (you should see some of my draft articles), it feels incredible meaningful when I get feedback from people. I am reassured by all the others who feel the same things that I do and who aren’t afraid to express it.
However, despite my narcissistic tendencies, praise from strangers doesn’t fill the void in my emotions (better to realize this earlier than later).
I’ve been told by many that I need a hobby. I’m still thinking about it.
This brings me back to the bar last night. I told my therapist that I’m my best self when I’m drinking. I’m not going to fall into the alcoholism trap; it’ll end badly. Instead, I have to work on being more open when I’m sober.
But in that bar last night, I found meaning. Human connection is what it’s all about.
I’d rather be a connected fish in a small pond than an admired fish in a larger one.