My search for the meaning of life

07-22-2026

Lance’s Search for Meaning

Inspired by Arthur a 24 year old poker player that has a very similar outlook in life as me and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning

The older I get, the more I realize that my greatest obsession isn’t money, travel, business, or even self-improvement. It’s meaning. I don’t think about it once in a while. I think about it every single day.

Sometimes I wonder what keeps the world moving forward. Every morning, billions of people wake up and do jobs that most of us rarely think about. Someone picks up the trash. Someone cleans the sewers. Someone farms the fields. Someone harvests the lettuce that ends up on my plate. Someone drives trucks through the night so grocery store shelves stay full. Society works because countless people wake up believing that what they do matters.

For many people, that meaning comes from different places. Some find it in raising children and building a family. Others find it in their faith, believing they're part of something greater than themselves. Some dedicate their lives to helping others as doctors, teachers, or volunteers. Others chase excellence in sports, art, or music. Some build businesses. Some leave behind a legacy. Others find meaning in something as simple as friendships, laughter, traditions, caring for a pet, tending a garden, or simply showing up for the people they love.

Then I wonder what would happen if everyone woke up thinking like me. Society would probably collapse by lunch. I zoom out so far that life begins to feel unbelievably small. We're collections of roughly 50 trillion cells somehow held together, floating on a giant rock through an unimaginably large universe. I showed up at a random moment in history. I'll get maybe ninety years if I'm lucky, and then it's over.

From that perspective, it's easy to wonder whether anything I do truly matters in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Honestly, I don't think it does. Nothing I say, nothing I build, and nothing I accomplish will matter in another billion years. It'll all be dust anyway. It's a funny thought to have before your morning coffee.

It also makes me appreciate something I used to overlook. I think organized religion, sports, music, entertainment, friendships, parties, traditions, and shared communities all play an important role in human life. They're beautiful distractions, or maybe "beautiful stories" is a better way to put it. They keep most people from staring into the existential void wondering what any of this means. They connect us. They remind us that we belong somewhere. They give people stories to live inside instead of leaving everyone alone with the weight of infinite questions.

For me, though, those questions never completely go away. When I search for an objective meaning of life, I don't find one. I don't believe everything happens for a reason. I don't think the universe owes us a grand purpose. Much of life feels completely random in this weird simulation. We don't choose when we're born, where we're born, or what era we arrive in.

But somewhere along the way, I realized something that changed how I think. Maybe meaning isn't something we discover. Maybe it's something we create. Life is way more fun when I give it meaning than when I sit around waiting for meaning to magically appear.

So I brainwash myself. I tell myself I want to build wealth, not because money is the finish line, but because money buys freedom. Freedom to travel. Freedom to wake up wherever I want. Freedom to experience different cultures. Freedom to meet people whose lives are completely different from mine. Travel has become one of the deepest sources of meaning in my life because every country teaches me something new about being human.

I brainwash myself into believing I want to take care of the people I love. I want to help my family. I want to build genuine friendships. I want to leave every room a little better than I found it. Those choices give shape to an otherwise indifferent universe.

But then another question appears. What happens if I accomplish all of those goals? What happens if I make more money than I ever imagined? What happens when I'm eighty years old, wrinkly as hell, and nobody wants to have sex with me anymore? What if Viagra stops working when I am 80 and my dick don't even get hard anymore after taking a bunch of pills. What is my meaning of life then? Currently I am still lucky girls find me attractive still and I am still getting laid. I seem to find a lot of myself worth and validation from the women I sleep with. Also I hate to admit this it's such a asian thing to say, but the zeros in my bank account really dictate the respect i have for myself and really hold myself worth together. NO MONEY NO HONEY LANCEY POO!!! LOL

I don't plan on having children in this lifetime. That means I probably won't experience parts of life that many people describe as their deepest source of meaning, like raising kids, watching them grow, becoming a grandfather, or watching future generations carry on the family.

Sometimes I wonder what eighty-year-old Lance will care about. Will he laugh at what forty-year-old Lance thought was important? Will he value quiet mornings over big dreams? Will he care less about achievement and more about peace? Will he simply be grateful for one more sunrise?

I honestly don't know. And if I'm being honest, that uncertainty scares me. The meaning that drives me today probably won't be the meaning that carries me when I'm old.

Maybe every decade introduces a new version of ourselves with a different definition of a life well lived. Maybe there isn't one meaning of life.

Maybe there are many. One for when we're twenty. Another for when we're forty. Another for when we're eighty. Each version of ourselves inherits the story from the previous one and writes the next chapter.

This blog is my attempt to document that journey. Not because I think I have the answers. I don't. If anything, I have more questions every year. But maybe that's the point.

Maybe a meaningful life isn't built by finding the final answer. Maybe it's built by continuing the search.

So this is where my search begins. Not for the meaning of life. For my meaning of life. And I have a feeling that answer will keep changing for as long as I'm here.