The Meaning of Life

There’s a line from Alan Watts that has a way of stopping people mid‑scroll:

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” - Alan Watts

At first glance, it sounds poetic — maybe even comforting. But if you sit with it long enough, it becomes something else entirely. It becomes a doorway.

Most of us don’t arrive at this understanding early in life. We grow up absorbing the meanings handed to us by family, culture, religion, school, and society. We learn what matters, what doesn’t, what success looks like, what failure means, and who we’re supposed to become. These meanings feel solid, unquestionable, almost natural.

Until they don’t.

The First Cracks

For many people, the first time meaning falls apart is painful. It can feel like the ground giving way — a loss of identity, direction, or certainty. Spiritual awakenings, major life transitions, and moments of deep questioning often come with grief, confusion, or a sense of being unmoored.

This is the stage where we realise that the meanings we inherited were never truly ours. They were scaffolding — useful for a time, but not built for a lifetime.

The Ebb and Flow of Letting Go

As we move through these cycles of shedding and re‑forming, something interesting happens. Each time a layer of meaning dissolves, the process becomes a little less dramatic. A little less catastrophic. A little more natural.

Eventually, we reach a point where meaning no longer feels like something we discover or obey, but something we participate in.

Meaning becomes relational, fluid, responsive — something we can shape, release, or simply let be.

The Quiet Fall

And then, for some, there comes a deeper shift.

The moment when the idea “nothing has inherent meaning except the meaning we give it” stops being a concept and becomes a lived experience.

When that happens, the falling away of old meanings is no longer traumatic. It’s not even noticeable. It’s like a leaf dropping from a tree in late autumn — natural, effortless, unforced.

Life becomes lighter. Not empty, but spacious.

The pressure to achieve something “beyond ourselves” dissolves. The urgency to justify our existence softens. What remains is a quieter, more immediate relationship with being alive.

So What Does This Leave Us With?

Not nihilism. Not apathy. Not a void.

What remains is freedom.

Freedom to choose meaning.
Freedom to release meaning.
Freedom to let meaning arise organically from the moment you’re in.

Watts wasn’t telling us that life is meaningless. He was pointing to something subtler:

Life doesn’t need a meaning in order to be meaningful.

Being alive is enough.