the philosophical rabbit hole of meaning and peace

the philosophical rabbit hole of meaning and peace

ayushi thakkar

Oct 16, 2026

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i’ve been thinking about how absurd it is that we can spend so much of our lives trying to build a life we’re happy with and still have remarkably little idea what we’d do if we finally got there. there’s always another ambition to pursue or something about ourselves that could use a little work. even on perfectly pleasant days, i can find an extraordinary number of reasons to believe that life would be better once a few outstanding matters were resolved. the trouble is that i’ve been resolving outstanding matters for most of my adult life, and the list has shown no reasonable interest in getting shorter.

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i suppose the larger question is whether a good life should feel good while we’re living it. i want to do meaningful work and make something worthwhile of my time, but i’d also like to experience the satisfaction of being alive without constantly evaluating how well i’m doing at it. ambition gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning, although it can also make an otherwise lovely afternoon feel dramatically unproductive. contentment sounds wonderful until i start worrying that i’ve become too comfortable. apparently, i’d like to be deeply fulfilled and permanently motivated while remaining entirely free from the inconveniences associated with either.

this is the sort of problem that sends me down a philosophical rabbit hole, and the first interesting discovery is that meaning and peace haven’t always been treated as the same pursuit.

aristotle believed that a flourishing life involved developing our abilities and living in accordance with virtue. his idea of

eudaimonia

is often translated as happiness, although it has much more to do with living well over the course of a lifetime than enjoying every individual moment. there’s something reassuring about this because many of the things that give my life meaning are frequently inconvenient. writing something worthwhile can be maddening, learning a new skill involves prolonged periods of incompetence and loving people requires a willingness to have your otherwise reasonable plans interrupted.

a meaningful life, by this account, can contain plenty of days that don’t feel especially wonderful. the satisfaction belongs partly to the larger experience of becoming capable of something or participating in something you care about. i find this helpful whenever i catch myself interpreting difficulty as evidence that i’ve chosen the wrong path. sometimes the work is frustrating because it matters enough to demand something from me.

but epicurus a different concern. he thought much of human unhappiness came from our inability to distinguish what we genuinely needed from what we’d convinced ourselves would make us happier. despite his reputation for indulgence, he advocated a modest life built around friendship and freedom from unnecessary anxiety. the problem with chasing status or extravagant desires was that satisfying them hardly ever brought the lasting security people expected.

this is where things become personally inconvenient. i’ve noticed how quickly an achievement can become part of the furniture of my life. something that once seemed almost impossibly exciting will eventually become ordinary enough that i barely notice it. the mind has a remarkable talent for treating yesterday’s ambition as today’s minimum requirement. once that happens, even genuine progress can feel disappointing because the standard for satisfaction keeps moving.

epicurus offers an interesting practical correction: become more selective about which desires deserve your effort. i’ve started treating new ambitions with a little more scrutiny, especially when their appeal comes from imagining how accomplished or impressive i’ll feel afterward. some goals remain worth pursuing even after that fantasy wears off. others lose a surprising amount of their charm when i consider what everyday life would actually involve once i’d achieved them. making that distinction has saved me from pursuing a few things that sounded much better as aspirations than they would have felt as responsibilities.

then there’s albert camus, who considered the possibility that human beings are searching for a grand explanation that the universe has no obligation to provide. he called the collision between our desire for meaning and the world’s indifference

the absurd

. it’s an unsettling thought until you consider how much time we spend assuming that a meaningful life must eventually add up to one comprehensible story.

i’ve always liked his image of sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder uphill only to watch it roll down again. the repetition is almost offensively familiar to anyone who has ever completed a household chore. but camus imagines a man who can acknowledge the absurdity of his circumstances without surrendering his capacity to live. there’s a sense of freedom in abandoning the demand that existence justify itself before we agree to participate.

i think this has practical implications for the ordinary way we spend our time. some experiences are valuable without leading anywhere in particular. a long conversation with a friend doesn’t need to develop into an important relationship milestone. reading a novel can be a perfectly worthwhile use of several afternoons even if you forget most of the plot five years later. enjoying something is already a substantial reason to have done it, and i’ve found that remembering this makes my days considerably less exhausting.

peace, however, presents another difficulty because the human mind seems almost professionally committed to finding reasons for dissatisfaction.

buddhist philosophy describes

dukkha

, a term encompassing suffering and the persistent unsatisfactoriness of experiences that cannot remain exactly as we want them. even enjoyable circumstances are temporary, and our attempts to hold on to them can create fresh anxiety. the mind begins anticipating their disappearance while we’re still in the middle of enjoying them.

i recognise this tendency whenever i catch myself mentally preparing for an unpleasant possibility that hasn’t happened. a good week becomes an opportunity to worry about how long it will last. an ordinary disagreement occupies far more of my attention than the conversation itself required. sometimes i’ve spent so long rehearsing possible futures that the actual day has passed with relatively little participation from me.

one thing that’s helped is becoming more careful about what deserves an actual response. when something is worrying me, i separate the parts of the situation that require a decision from those that are simply uncertain. the first category gets a concrete action, whether that means making an appointment or addressing a problem i’ve been postponing. the second requires a different skill: allowing an unresolved possibility to remain unresolved without giving it unlimited access to my attention. it takes practice, and i still catch myself trying to prepare for circumstances that exist exclusively in my imagination.

i find it interesting that these traditions seem to disagree about the shape of a good life while identifying different problems that can prevent us from enjoying one. aristotle takes our capacities seriously. epicurus is suspicious of unnecessary desire. camus accepts the absence of a final explanation, while buddhist thought examines the suffering we create by expecting life to remain agreeable and predictable.

the difficulty is knowing which philosophy to listen to on any given day. ambition can be healthy until it begins consuming everything else. acceptance can be liberating until it becomes an excuse to tolerate circumstances that genuinely need changing. there’s no perfect formula for balancing the two, but i’ve started paying attention to the consequences of each.

if working towards something leaves me engaged and interested in life, that’s usually a good sign. if the same goal begins making every ordinary pleasure feel like an interruption, something needs adjusting. similarly, if accepting a situation makes room for a life i enjoy, there’s value in leaving it alone. if acceptance requires repeatedly ignoring my own dissatisfaction, i probably have a decision to make.

i’ve also become interested in giving meaning and peace different places in my day. meaningful work often benefits from structure and deliberate effort, while contentment tends to disappear when i approach it with the same managerial enthusiasm. finishing work at a reasonable hour and allowing myself to enjoy the evening has become a better practice than expecting every moment to contribute towards something larger. there are times to be ambitious, and there should be times when ambition is allowed to mind its own business.

i don’t think the philosophical problem of existence is going to be resolved in the near future, which is mildly inconvenient considering how much time i’ve devoted to thinking about it. but the more i read, the less convinced i am that peace is some final destination we’re supposed to reach after becoming sufficiently accomplished or enlightened.

a life can be worthwhile while it remains unfinished. its pleasures don’t become less valuable because they are temporary, and the things we care about don’t require universal significance to deserve our attention.

i still want to make something meaningful of my time here. i have work i’d like to finish and ambitions that continue to interest me. i’d also like to become the sort of person who can sit through a perfectly lovely afternoon without mentally drafting an improvement plan for the rest of her existence.

it seems a shame to spend an entire life figuring out how to live one and leave ourselves so little time to enjoy it.

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