Nothing has meaning beyond the meaning we give it

Consider the perfect zero, that elegant cipher that holds all possibilities within its round absence. We draw circles in the sand and declare them sacred, not because they are, but because we give them a label.

And in that declaration lies the power of the profound.

I sit in my garden watching a bee navigate the geometry of a flower. The bee doesn't question the purpose of its dance with nectar and pollen - it simply dances. We humans, cursed or blessed with consciousness, paint meaning onto every petal, every wing-beat, every shadow. We are like incurable artists, daubing significance onto the blank canvas of existence like children with infinite colours at their disposal.

The reality though is that nothing really matters until we decide it does. Then, mysteriously, it matters absolutely. Watch a mother lift her child - there is nothing in the laws of physics that demands such tenderness, no cosmic imperative for comfort. Yet in that moment, the entire universe arranges itself around this simple act of care.

The stars hold their breath.

We are meaning-making machines trapped in a meaningless universe. But its only meaningless until we decide to impart some meaning to it. Perhaps that's exactly what gives us our beauty - like spiders spinning gossamer webs between branches, we create intricate patterns of significance in the void. The web isn't less magnificent for being temporary. The dew drops that gather on it at dawn aren't less brilliant for being ephemeral.

So I choose to live in this sweet contradiction. I embrace the paradox of caring desperately about things that don't matter, of loving fiercely in a universe indifferent to love. Like a child's game of make-believe that becomes more real than reality, I construct elaborate castles of meaning from the sand of existence. And in doing so, I perform the ultimate alchemy - transforming nothing into everything, absence into presence, void into value.

But to do that I need to collect moments like others collect stamps: the way light fractures through morning fog, the particular silence that follows a snowfall, the sound of distant laughter carried on summer wind. None of these hold inherent meaning. They are just atoms moving according to ancient laws, light waves dancing their predetermined dance.

Yet I assign them value, and in doing so, I transform physics into alchemy.

This is our superpower - this arbitrary bestowal of importance. Like ancient kings naming constellations, we point to random clusters of reality and declare them meaningful. Love, justice, beauty, truth - these are not discoveries but inventions, brilliant fabrications spun from the raw material of existence.

And here's what is exquisite. Knowing that we create the meaning doesn't diminish the power of that meaning. Like a playwright who weeps at her own play, we are moved by the very stories we write ourselves. We fall in love with our own illusions, and those illusions become as solid as mountains, as vital as the air we breathe.

So we go on assigning significance to insignificant things: a child's first word, a perfectly ripe peach, the way certain songs make us cry. We build cathedrals of meaning in the vacuum of space, and their beauty lies not in their permanence but in their perfect, necessary futility.

We are like cosmic graffiti artists, spraying our declarations of importance across the indifferent walls of reality.

Perhaps this is what it means to be human - to know that nothing matters, and to matter all the more fiercely because of it. To understand that we are drawing lines between stars that have no connection, and to draw them anyway, with such precision and care that they become more real than the stars themselves.

In the end, we are all just children building sandcastles at the edge of an infinite ocean. The tide will come. The castles will fall.

But oh, how magnificently we build them, and how much they matter to us while they last.

I write ‘cos words are fun. More about me here. Follow @hackrlife on X or subscribe to my blog