Illustration: Severin Roesen (American, 1816-1872). “Summer’s Bounty.”

I have heard the meaning of life is the reproduction of life. Or, to explain altruism, the meaning of life is selfish genes passing each other along in aggregate. I think the evidence and conclusions from the evidence are just as much in place to say the meaning of life is suffering. Life’s meaning as making more life, life’s meaning as suffering, those are two views. But there are other views.

Life and a meaning of life are two things. Life is one thing. Life is life. The meaning of life can be reasoned, poetic, horrifying, minimally considered, all those and more, but it is not life. Any meaning of life is a statement about life, not life. This is another view of life: life in itself, life as life.

Life “without meaning” does not sit well with some. There can be an impulse to give meaning to a meaningless life. There can be an impulse to even say life without a meaning must mean something, that life is futile or punitive or “a mystery” (ie there is a meaning, we just don’t know it). But there are other views.

Think of a moment when you were “full of life,” whatever that might mean to you and whatever moment that might have been. I will guess that you were strong, in motion, laughing, wild, and there was beauty, symmetry, danger. That is life.

I will guess that there was a a lack of differentiation between you, the people and animals with you, the land, the sky, the rocks. The rocks and the sky – are they alive? Maybe alive and life are overlapping but not identical. In the way you and the not-you were not so clearly two things at that moment. I don’t know.

I will guess that the moment lasted in a way moments do not last in “dead” time. That, I do know.

Life without meaning is like a forest that does not have its own television show. It is a forest both with and without that television show. Is there no television show? The forest is full of struggle, growth, death, joy, darkness. Is there a television show? That is fine, it is a thing you can watch, and the television show is not the forest.

Life is not a cause, nor a burden, nor even a delight, although those can be put upon life. Life in itself, causeless and meaningless, this is what I think of as vitalism.

Foster the life you have at this moment. Rise from plateau to plateau. Burst into flames.