The Game of Meaning Vs. Purpose: Why You Want to Wake Up In the Dream, Not From It

Everyone’s running around looking for “meaning” and “purpose” like they’re hidden Easter eggs in some cosmic scavenger hunt.

You know the drill—people think they’ll find meaning in their morning coffee, their job, their relationships, maybe even their favorite yoga pose. But here’s the thing: meaning doesn’t exist.

It’s manmade. It’s a construct we throw together to make sense of this wild ride called life. It’s like believing your horoscope has the secret to your soul. Fun? Sure. Helpful? Maybe. Real? Not so much. So what is meaning, really? It’s the fuel. It's the story you tell yourself to make everything feel important, to keep your ego happy. It’s personal, subjective, and in the grand scheme of things, kind of arbitrary. You create meaning from within, but here’s the problem—meaning alone doesn’t do anything. You can have a tank full of gas, but if you don’t have an engine, you’re not going anywhere. That’s where purpose comes in. If meaning is the fuel, purpose is the engine. It’s the thing that takes all that internal, made-up value and puts it into action.

Purpose is how you take what feels important on the inside and bring it into play within the illusion we’re all dancing in. Without purpose, your life’s just sitting in the driveway with a full tank…

…but no wheels to turn.

Meaning is a Construct We Use to Keep Playing

Let’s get one thing straight:

Meaning isn’t some grand universal truth waiting to be uncovered. It’s just a construct, a story we create to keep ourselves engaged in the game.

The ego doesn’t like the idea of meaninglessness. It gets jittery when faced with the fact that none of this is “real,” so it makes up meaning to keep things interesting. Meaning is how we convince ourselves that what we do matters, even though, from the perspective of awareness, none of it actually does. Here’s the catch: