The Pandemic Broke My Sense of Meaning—This Story Put It Back Together
What do you do when you realize life has no inherent meaning? You invent your own.
In this episode, I’m doing something different: I’m reading a short story from my book, The Healing Book, which published in 2023. The story is called “Searching for Meaning in the Stars,” and it follows a theoretical physicist who writes a memoir about overcoming an existential crisis in his cabin on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.
During the pandemic, I found myself in my late thirties, trapped at home, reflecting on my life and realizing I’d lost faith in the idea that human existence has any meaning at all. It was unsettling. I didn’t want to become a nihilist, so I turned to existentialist thinkers, like Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, Dostoevsky, Kafka, who all offered the same radical solution: If life has no meaning, invent your own.
I also found wisdom in Alan Lightman’s Searching for Meaning on an Island in Maine, where the renowned physicist describes turning off his boat in the middle of a lake in Maine, staring up at the stars, and feeling connected to something larger than himself. That moment became the seed for this story.
So I started my own revolt. I accepted that life itself has no meaning, but that doesn’t mean there’s no meaning in life. Meaning comes from participating, from creating your own reasons to live, even if you know those reasons are fiction.
This story is the result of that search. It’s about a character grappling with the same questions I was asking myself, trying to find a foothold in the void.
In this episode:
• A reading of “Searching for Meaning in the Stars” from The Healing Book
• The existential crisis that inspired the story
• What I learned from Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, and Alan Lightman
• How the pandemic forced me to confront meaninglessness
• Why inventing your own meaning might be the only honest way to live
A note on production: This episode was beautifully crafted by the late Chris Potter, an extraordinarily talented sound editor and mixer who has been working in audio since the late 1970s. In his brilliant career, Chris produced thousands of commercials, tracked live orchestras in Europe, directed celebrity narrations for IMAX films, and created soundtracks for narrative and documentary programs. His work elevates this story into something cinematic. See his portfolio at www.rumblejar.com.
📖 Learn more about The Healing Book: https://www.dustingrinnell.com/the-healing-book
💡 About Curiously: www.dustingrinnell.com/podcast