Does Disinterest in Meaning Reveal a Meaningless Life?

Some people have confided with me, occasionally in great embarrassment, that they are not at all busy with the meaning of their lives. They are not wondering what the meaning of their lives is. They are not asking themselves whether their lives are or are not meaningful. They are not searching for what would make their lives more meaningful. They are not concerned that their lives are meaningless because they will die one day, or because the universe is large and they are small, or because they achieved in their lives less than Einstein, Mozart, Rembrandt, Aristotle, or Mother Teresa did. They just never think about the meaning of their lives.

But many of my interlocutors also wondered whether this shows that there is something wrong with them. Doesn’t their lack of interest in the meaning of their life show that their life is meaningless and that they are shallow and unsophisticated? Why can’t they be like those who think about and discuss the meaning of their lives? What’s wrong with them?

I suggest that lack of concern about meaning in one’s life doesn’t show anything problematic about the meaning in one’s life. Consider the following analogy: Many people don’t think at all about their hand as long as it functions well. They are much more aware of their hand—it becomes an “issue” for them—when the hand isn’t functioning properly or gives them pain.

Similarly, not thinking about the meaning of one’s life may issue from the fact that one’s life is sufficiently meaningful. Some people whose lives are meaningful aren’t conscious of this fact, and don’t even sense the meaningfulness, because it’s just there, without interruption or significant tides and ebbs. They are so accustomed to the meaningfulness of their lives that they stopped noticing it.

Another way of approaching the issue is this: It is common in philosophy to distinguish between various types of knowledge. Two of these are “knowing how” and “knowing that.” The first is the knowledge we ascribe to people when we say that they know how to do something (e.g., how to ride a bicycle). The second is the type of knowledge we ascribe to people when we say that they know that a certain fact is true (e.g., that Paris is the capital of France).