Meaning Making Machines
“I don’t think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways.” — Osho
Human beings are meaning-making machines. A conversation ends, and we build entire narratives about why. Pain arrives, and we ask: What did I do to deserve this? The sensation doubles, triples, becomes not just momentary but a story reaching into past and future.
There’s a devastating gap between what actually happened and what we think happened. Most of our suffering lives in that gap.
An email goes unanswered. What occurred might be utterly neutral. But we don’t do neutral. Soon we’re not responding to what happened but to our interpretation, which is really just our interpretation of dozens of previous interpretations.
They didn’t respond because they don’t value me. They don’t value me because I’m not valuable. I’m not valuable because that’s what I’ve always been. We build elaborate architectures of suffering from the tiniest bits of data.
The Paradox of Trust
Some people move through life with inherent lightness, trusting that even gut-wrenching moments are part of a larger unfolding. They experience pain without building monuments to it.
Working in Jaisalmer with Thar Desert’s nomadic communities, I saw this trust lived daily. They look at life with a simplicity that feels almost radical to the over-analytical mind. Sharing resources isn’t burdened with questions about reciprocity or keeping score; it’s simply about survival. When a well runs dry, they move. When the rains come, they celebrate. There’s no grand meaning extracted from these moments, just response, adaptation, continuation.
For those of us raised in contexts that reward complexity, this trust feels impossible. We work relentlessly toward goals, certain that meaning must be earned through effort. Or we drift, paralyzed by inability to choose which meaning to invest in.
But maybe neither the relentless striver nor the drifter has the answer. Both are still operating the machinery, just with different settings. Maybe it’s about accepting that life contains both action and stillness, both meaning and meaninglessness, and these aren’t contradictions to be resolved but dualities to be inhabited.
The Thing Is
Time and again, across traditions and centuries, the message echoes: Life inherently has no meaning.
Not nihilistically, but liberatingly. Zen speaks of “suchness,” the is-ness of things before we layer interpretations on top. The Tao reminds us that truth escapes the moment we try to capture it. Even Camus arrives at similar territory: the universe is indifferent, and our search for inherent meaning is absurd, yet there’s freedom in that recognition.
We go along. We feel momentarily lighter. And then we continue as though this time will be different.
The machinery won’t stop. It’s not designed to. Our capacity to make meaning is part of what makes us human. It’s given us art, science, culture, connection.
The suffering comes not from the machinery itself but from believing the meanings we generate are objectively true, permanently fixed. From taking our interpretations so seriously that we forget they’re interpretations at all.
What if we watched ourselves create stories the way we watch clouds form shapes: interesting, creative, ephemeral, but not requiring our belief?
Just Laugh
Perhaps, we just love taking this all way too seriously. The whole thing is ridiculous. Learn to laugh at yourself. At your drama. At the fact that we’re a temporary collection of atoms that got conscious enough to worry about stuff.
Being alive is already the party. We’re just overthinking the invitation.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. I guess.
— Aastha Johri, Studio Agor