Recently I’ve been quiet.
I’m sorry, truly, to those I haven’t replied to for a while. It wasn’t personal. It’s just… it’s been difficult.
I’ve always been a positive, optimistic person. An overcomer.
There have been moments, critical ones, where only God knows how I made it through and I was alright, I seem to thrive.
The irony? Now that I’ve reached some sense of stability and comfort and have achieved most of my goals, now that I find myself asking more and more:
What’s the point?
One sunny day, you wake up and the world just stops making sense.
One moment, everything feels good — and the next, it’s like you’re in a strange dream… and you wonder how you even got there.
You look around and start to wonder:
“Does life have meaning?”
“Is this going anywhere?”
“What’s the point?”
Is there an honest answer to the meaning of life that actually makes sense?
Why does meaninglessness even nihilism seem so close to my heart.
This isn’t just an abstract philosophy.
And it’s not simply because I’m Russian and genetically predisposed to overthinking — though Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and so many others in classic literature might suggest otherwise.
It’s something you feel deep in your chest.
Let’s call it what it is: an existential crisis.
It can be unsettling.
Confusing.
Disorienting.
Even disheartening.
And it can also be… powerfully good.
The Problem of Meaninglessness
I have found this story that illustrates this well.
“Imagine a happy group of morons who are engaged in work.
They are carrying bricks in an open field.
As soon as they have stacked all the bricks at one end of the field,
they proceed to transport them to the opposite end.
This continues without stop.
Every day of every year, they do the same thing.
One day, one of the morons stops long enough to ask himself what he is doing.
He wonders what purpose there is in carrying the bricks.
And from that instant on, he is not quite as content with his occupation as he had been before.
I am the moron who wonders why he is carrying the bricks.”
as quoted in Existential Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom
The idea is this:
People who ask these kinds of questions — “What’s the point?” — might actually be more in touch with the truth than those who never ask at all.
Maybe life — as it’s usually lived — is absurd, when seen clearly.
Maybe an existential crisis doesn’t come from seeing too little, but from seeing too much.
Maybe the crisis isn’t a sign that you’ve failed to understand the world,
but that you’re starting to see it for what it really is.
And that can be… overwhelming.
I will never forget that morning
We were on the yacht in the Mediterranean Sea. The sun was rising.
The party from the night before had finally ended — music faded, glasses emptied, laughter scattered like confetti in the wind.
Everyone else had gone to sleep, but me and the oligarch (no names will be ever given) stayed on the deck, watching the sky shift from black to deep gold.
And then, out of nowhere, he turned to me and asked:
“What’s the point of all of this?”
I was lost for words.
This was a man who had achieved everything he ever wanted.
He had more money than anyone could ever need. He had dated — and truly, he had some of the most beautiful women in the world, including world-famous singers and actresses.
He could do all the things most people only dream about.
And here he was… asking me that question.
What’s the point of it all?
At the time, I couldn’t understand it.
Now, I can.
Leo Tolstoy wrote this:
“…Five years ago something very strange began to happen to me. At first I began having moments of bewilderment, when my life would come to a halt, as if I did not know how to live or what to do; I would lose my presence of mind and fall into a state of depression. But this passed and I continued to live as before. Then the moments of bewilderment recurred more frequently, and they always took the same form. Whenever my life came to a halt, the questions would arise: Why? And what next?
At first I thought these were pointless and irrelevant questions. I thought that the answers to them were well known and that if I should ever want to resolve them, it would not be too hard for me; it was just that I could not be bothered with it now, but if I should take it upon myself, then I would find the answers. But the questions began to come up more and more frequently and their demands to be answered became more and more urgent . . .
The questions seemed to be such foolish, simple, childish questions. But as soon as I laid my hands on them and tried to resolve them, I was immediately convinced, first of all, that they were not childish and foolish questions but the most vital and profound questions in life, and secondly, that no matter how much I pondered them there was no way I could resolve them. Before I could be occupied with my Samara estate, with the education of my son, or with the writing of books, I had to know why I was doing these things. As long as I do not know the reason why, I cannot do anything. In the middle of my concern with the household, which at the time kept me quite busy, a questions would suddenly come into my head: “Very well, you will have 16,200 acres in the Samara province, as well as 300 horses; what then?” And I was completely taken aback and did not know what else to think. As soon as I started to think about the education of my children, I would ask myself, “Why?” Or I would reflect on how the people might attain prosperity, and I would suddenly ask myself, “What concern is it of mine?” Or in the middle of thinking about the fame that my works were bringing me I would say to myself, “Very well, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, more famous than all the writers in the world – so what?
And I could find absolutely no reply.
My life came to a stop. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep; indeed, I could not help but breathe, eat, drink, and sleep. But there was no life in me because I had no desires whose satisfaction I would have found reasonable. If I wanted something, I knew beforehand that it did not matter whether or not I got it.
If a fairy had come and offered to fulfill my every wish, I would not have known what to wish for. If in moments of intoxication I should have not desires but the habits of old desires, in moments of sobriety I knew that it was all a delusion, that I really desired nothing. I did not even want to discover truth anymore because I had guessed what it was. The truth was that life is meaningless . . .
The only thing that amazed me was how I had failed to realize this in the very beginning. All this had been common knowledge for so long. If not today, then tomorrow sickness and death will come (indeed, they were already approaching) to everyone, to me and nothing will remain except the stench and the worms. My deeds, whatever they may be, will be forgotten sooner or later and I myself will be no more. Why, then, do anything? How can anyone fail to see this and live? That’s what is amazing! It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion! Nor is there anything funny or witty about it; it is only cruel and stupid.”
– excerpt from Confession
and so did William Shakespeare . . .
“O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world . . .
This goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you,
this brave o’erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,
why,
it appears no other thing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!
in form, in moving, how express an admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
man delights not me; no, nor woman neither . . .
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life . . . ”
– excerpt from Hamlet
What If Meaninglessness Is a Sign to Grow?
According to David Deida’s opinion:
“Think of it this way: when we were children, we played with toy cars or dolls or sandcastles. We loved them. But eventually, we outgrew them.
Then we moved on: to money, sex, ambition, houses.”
It does sound valid, but what happens when you’ve had all of that — and it still doesn’t fill you? That’s what I want to know.
I’ve seen many people like this.
If we’d never gotten bored with sandcastles, we’d never have moved forward.
Sometimes, meaninglessness is that same process — happening on another level.
You’ve proven you can survive. You can make money, pay bills, have relationships. You living comfortably.
But still, the question arises:
Is this all there is?
When dissatisfaction and boredom begin to rise, it may not be a sign of failure.
It may be the soul outgrowing its old skin.
Not a call to abandon everything — but an invitation to go deeper.
To ask the bigger questions.
To discover the next layer of your purpose.
To listen for what’s calling now.
Is there any solution?
One aspect of anything resembling a “solution” to meaninglessness might lie in this: whether your life feels like a random collection of disconnected events — or a story.
A story, by its nature, carries meaning. It has movement, structure and emotional truth.
It makes sense in some deeper, fundamental way.
But a life that feels like a series of unrelated moments… is just that. Random. Fragmented. It doesn’t hold together. It doesn’t make sense.
So part of digging yourself out of that hollow place may involve looking at what once seemed like scattered, isolated moments — and discovering the story within them.
Nietzsche might call it “making order from chaos.”
In this light, the existentialists may have been right about something essential: life gives us raw material. But what we do with it — how we arrange it, interpret it, shape it — that’s where meaning lives.
We don’t always choose the events. But we do get to write the story.
