"I need to figure out why I'm here, what the meaning of my life is, before I do anything." You've probably stood frozen with that thought for a while. I have too. But lately I've started to wonder whether we've got the order backwards.
I was watching Attack on Titan when I jotted down a memo. The title itself — "attack," the idea of pushing forward — kept sticking with me. It's a story about people who move forward first, instead of waiting until they fully understand the meaning of it all.
Meaning Is a Result, Not a Starting Condition#
We usually think we have to find the meaning first before we can move. We wait until we're sure this is the right path, sure of what this work means to us, and only then do we take a step.
But flip the order around, and it looks like this: meaning might be a result, not a starting condition. You live first, build relationships, take responsibility, get things done — and only later does the "ah, so this was my meaning" catch up with you.
So putting existence ahead of meaning comes down to an attitude like this:
- Rather than staying frozen until you find the perfect meaning,
- you choose to live and try now, even if it's incomplete.
If you do nothing while waiting to find meaning, meaning only gets harder to find. You have to live for meaning to arise, and you have to move for the reasons to appear.
Love Works the Same Way#
This same story repeats itself in love. In Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving, mature love doesn't come from the intensity of emotion.
We tend to think of love as a feeling, right? That the racing heart, the flutter, the way your whole mind tilts toward someone — that intensity is the size of your love. But that intensity tends to fade with time.
Mature love is built from repeated choices. You keep choosing, every single day, to respect, to take responsibility, to care, to be patient. So love isn't a feeling that's simply handed to you — it's closer to a trained attitude.
To Sum Up#
After writing that memo, three sentences stayed with me.
- Meaning may not be a discovery, but a byproduct of action.
- You have to live for meaning to arise, and move for the reasons to appear.
- Love isn't a feeling — it's a trained attitude.
All three are really saying the same thing. If you try to live only after you have the perfect answer in hand, that answer rarely comes. But if you take a step forward while still incomplete, the very act of living brings the answer to you.
So there's no need to stay frozen just because the meaning feels blurry right now. Doing one thing you can do today might be the fastest way to find it.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
— Søren Kierkegaard
