The stranger I work with questioned me after discovering that life, according to me, has no purpose. “So life has no meaning, you say. And you come to this conclusion through philosophy? So if you look for meaning in life, it is better not to do philosophy?”

I replied. “Well, I said that life has no purpose in the sense that there is no goal where we have to work to like a heaven or an endpoint in our evolution. In general, life also has no meaning, but it is easier to give your life or a period of your life a meaning. A good meaning for you might be razing a family, it’s something that comes naturally and doesn’t need much debating, but it is harder to find the purpose for raising a family. And indeed, philosophy has helped me reach this insight. It did not tell me literally what to think; it more or less made the thoughts I already had more explicit. Doing philosophy is like doing a sport or playing an instrument. The more you do it, the better you can get at it, even if you have little talent. Everybody can do philosophy in the way we can all play football or the piano, but if you practice it, you will get better at it.

The stranger asked, “so you think you understand life better than me because you read a couple of books?”

Me, “ I don’t know if I understand it better, and I think the most significant difference between you and me is that I can probably talk more elaborately about what I believe. Maybe you have a better gut feeling, but you said earlier that what you think hasn’t changed for years, and most of it comes from your upbringing. You have been standing still and haven’t played, so to say”

The stranger asked, “but what is wrong with that?”

To be continued…