The meaning of life is not across the world
I still forget, sometimes, that the meaning of life is not something I can chase—it’s something to I have to incubate.
Written on June 1st, by the water.
A few weeks before I graduated college, one of my favorite professors delivered an impassioned monologue. “The meaning of life is not across the world,” he said to our small class like the star of a student production. “You won’t find yourself in Thailand unless you’ve found yourself here first. The meaning of life is not something you discover—it is something you create. You build the meaning of your own life with the people you love.”
A bit grandiose for a marketing professor, sure. But I’ve long lived for grandiosity. And he sounded so right. Despite literally being weeks away from living outside Chiang Mai for the summer (was this speech just for me, I wondered, unable to shake the adolescent thought) I tried with desperation to internalize his words.
The meaning of life is something you create.
My final semester of college was a shit show. When it kicked off in January 2018, I was 20, ready to graduate a year early, convincing everyone (myself, mostly) I had next steps figured out. My bank account was thinly padded from a few student positions. My resume was ready to rake in job offers. I’d put down deposits on a wedding DJ and photographer—my fiancé was my boyfriend of five years, the guy I started dating as a baby sophomore in high school—and I’d be damned if I let anyone make me feel foolish for falling so young.
When March rolled around, I was giving him back his ring. My best friend drove me to my hometown two hours away and stayed with my parents while I finished the odyssey—ordeal—alone. I cried. He didn’t.
We went back to Madison that night, an oversized bluetooth speaker perched atop the center console because the car didn’t have an aux cord, found ourselves at a frat party where all I remember was fighting back tears when someone asked me where Matt was. When we got home my roommates and I dragged two mattresses across the living room floor and piled on them together, limbs overlapping with the intimacy of youth and everything feeling bigger than it probably is.
I started drinking too much, during the day, alone, because I had senioritis mixed with identity crisis and everyone else was still a junior. Once my roommate found me passed out on our living room couch with the front patio doors wide open and no one else home. I slacked off in class. (Secured the lowest GPA of my college career.) I threw myself into a new romance with a guy on the edge of our friend group and completely broke down when it didn’t work out. I was reading self-help books while drinking boxed wine at noon, wondering why I felt so sick all the time, where my energy had gone. I lost my voice for two straight weeks.
By the time Professor Altesch told me the meaning of life wasn’t on the other side of the world, I was a wreck craving an epiphany and his words seemed like a fine place to start.
They were.
It’s been six years since then. I’m married for real this time. We live in a converted campervan (bright yellow, the color of my childhood joy) with the goofiest dog and what feels like endless opportunity. And I still forget, sometimes, that the meaning of life is not something I can chase—it’s something to I have to incubate.
It is harder to feel down when you’re surrounded by ocean cliffs than grimy college house walls, but not by as much as my pre-van-life self would have thought. I can trek miles to a new place, glimpse puffins, wake with the sun, and still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. Like I am not enough. Like I don’t even deserve this, and now I’m overwhelmed, and how dare I be upset in such a beautiful place? How dare I feel lost when my fellow humans face real atrocities on the other side of the globe—hell, mere miles from where I stand in the Newfoundland fog? A novel environment can’t fix what is or isn’t inside, because the meaning of life has never been across the world.
I am still creating my answer each day, with clumsy fingers and tsunami self doubt, but I am closer at 26 than I have ever been before. I know a thing or two about grace now. My hands are just strong enough to hold confusion and gratitude in equal measure. And that is enough. It has to be enough.
In the words of Sarah Kay: “Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made, the ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night. / And know this. / Know you are the type of woman who is looking for a place to call yours. / Let the statues crumble. / You have always been the place. / You are a woman who can build it yourself.”
