Is the Search for Meaning Meaningless?

"When man first developed the ability to reason, he walked down to the river and killed himself."

It weird what you remember from your time reading, and what you don't.

I remember that quote from several years ago. 

I have no idea what the context was, or who said it, but it stuck with me.

There are a lot of things that "stuck with me" over my years of reading, but a lot more that didn't.

Like a lot of men throughout history, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the meaning of life. I have read a lot on the subject. But nothing has ever satisfied that curiosity. 

Sure, I remember some quotes here and there. But, I wonder if anyone ever actually read a philosophical book on "the meaning of life" and discovered the answer they were seeking.

There are so many books that people read, then recommend. Books like Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning," come to mind.

I read the book. I think I might have even read it twice, because it is a book that comes up in recommendation lists perpetually. Aside from the suffering he describes (I wonder if the narrative plays into the popularity of the book), nothing about that book is memorable for me. 

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."

I remember this quote from when I was reading Camus. It was his way of asking man's most important question: is life worth living?

Camus concluded that struggle itself providing the meaning to live. That we should accept that life is meaningless and revolt against it.

So our meaning becomes: struggle until you die.

Maybe that's the kind of meaning you're looking for, but it doesn't provide the meaning I'm looking for. 

"Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom."

Schopenhauer believed life didn't have any meaning. He believed the idea of "meaning" was just a way to mask the will, which was the essence of reality. 

We are either stuck in the pains of desire, or the inevitable boredom after the fulfillment of those desires. 

Once we get what we want, we want something else. 

As a Christian, I find meaning in the belief that God created me. Not just my body, but my consciousness and spirit. Unlike The Atheist, I find the idea that the order of the universe is some kind of random chance to be beyond absurd.

For a Christian, meaning is to be known by God.

If God chose to have grace upon you before the beginning of time, would we suffer from an existential crisis?

Perhaps God creates the desire for meaning within his elect as a way of calling his sheep.

John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

Meaning could be an illusion of the will, as Schopenhauer says. 

Maybe it's revolting against the meaningless of life by embracing the struggle, as Camus said.

Or our desire for meaning could be God's way of calling his sheep.

Ecclesiastes 1:2 Vanity of vanities; all is vanity