An Introduction to meaning

What if meaning is not a thing we find but an action we are?

We are accustomed to speaking of meaning as if it were a possession. 'What is the meaning of this?' we ask, as though meaning were a hidden object waiting to be uncovered. 'I am searching for meaning,' we say, as if it were a lost key or a buried treasure. But what if this entire way of speaking has led us astray? What if meaning is not a noun at all—not a thing to be found—but a verb, an action, a movement of intention? This question, simple as it sounds, upends everything we think we know about the human quest for purpose. It invites us to stop looking and start attending to what we are already doing.

A conversation across time

The question of meaning is among the oldest of human questions. It has been asked in every culture, in every era, and answered in remarkably different ways. For the ancient Greeks, meaning was woven into the fabric of the cosmos itself. Plato spoke of eternal Forms, perfect ideals that gave shape and significance to our imperfect world. His student Aristotle anchored meaning in purpose—the telos or end toward which every thing naturally moves. An acorn's meaning was to become an oak; a knife's meaning was to cut. Meaning was built into the nature of things.

This cosmic view held sway for centuries, often woven together with religious understandings of a divine order. But the modern era brought a dramatic shift. When the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared the 'death of God', he was not merely making a theological observation. He was pointing to the collapse of a transcendent source of meaning. If there was no divine guarantor of purpose, then meaning could no longer be discovered—it had to be created. Existentialist thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre took up this challenge, arguing that we are 'condemned to be free', forced to invent our own values in an indifferent universe.

Meanwhile, another tradition took a very different path. Analytic philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that the question of meaning was itself a confusion of language. 'Meaning' is not a mysterious substance but a function of how we use words in particular contexts. Ask about the meaning of life, and one has merely misused grammar. The question itself, they suggested, dissolves upon examination.

These are not merely academic disputes. They represent deeply different ways of understanding our place in the world. And none, perhaps, has proven entirely satisfying.

An alternative: meaning as action to intend

There is, however, another way to approach this question—one that draws on the very roots of the word itself. The English word 'meaning' comes from the Old English mǣnan, which meant simply 'to intend'. Etymologically, to mean something is to intend something. This is not a trivial observation. It suggests that meaning is not a static property of words or objects but a dynamic activity of beings.

Consider a simple example. When you raise your hand in a conversation, what is the meaning of that gesture? It depends entirely on what you intend. Are you signalling that you wish to speak? Are you greeting someone? Are you swatting at a fly? The same physical movement can carry radically different meanings depending on the intention behind it. The meaning is not in the gesture itself—it is in the intention that animates the gesture.

This insight can be extended far beyond human communication. A seed's meaning might be understood as its intention to grow, given the right conditions. A river's meaning might be its intention to flow toward the sea. A person's meaning might be understood as what they are intending through their actions, their choices, their relationships. Meaning, on this view, is not something we possess but something we do—the 'action to intend'.

What follows from this shift

If meaning is action to intend, then the search for meaning becomes a very different enterprise. We are no longer looking for a hidden object. We are attending to the direction of our own activity. Are our intentions aligned with our actions? Are we acting with purpose, or are we drifting? This reframing has profound implications.

First, it tethers meaning to agency. Meaning is not something that happens to us; it is something we enact through our choices and our conduct. Second, it connects meaning to responsibility. If meaning is intention, then we cannot claim to be passive victims of a meaningless universe. Our intentions—our actions—are always creating meaning, whether we acknowledge it or not. Third, it links meaning to the future. Intention is always directed toward some goal, some outcome, some possibility not yet realized. To live meaningfully is to live with a sense of direction.

One practical implication of this view is that meaning becomes observable. We can assess whether someone's stated intentions match their actual behaviour. We can ask whether our own actions are consistent with what we claim to value. This is not a comfortable exercise. It demands honesty and self-examination. But it offers something that abstract theories of meaning rarely provide: a concrete way to evaluate the meaningfulness of a life.

The danger of getting it wrong

When we treat meaning as a possession—something to be found, acquired, or achieved—we set ourselves up for a particular kind of suffering. We wait for meaning to arrive. We assume it will come through a career, a relationship, a revelation. We become passive consumers of experience, hoping that the world will deliver significance to us.

This passive stance can become a cage. We can spend years searching for meaning without realizing that we are already intending, already acting, already creating meaning through our very existence. The search itself can become a distraction from the simple question: what am I intending, right now, through my actions?

There is also a darker danger. If meaning is understood as something we can possess, we may seek to impose our meaning on others. We may mistake our own intentions for universal truths. We may become rigid, dogmatic, unwilling to recognize that other beings have their own intentions, their own directions, their own forms of meaning-making. The history of human cruelty is filled with examples of this kind of imposition.

An open question

We have traced a long arc—from ancient cosmic meaning to modern existential invention, from linguistic critique to the proposal that meaning is action to intend. But this is not a conclusion. It is an invitation. If meaning is not a thing we find but an action we are, then the question of meaning is not answered by any theory. It is answered by how we live.

Consider this: your life, right now, is an action of intending. You are intending something through your choices, your relationships, your work, your silences. What is it? Are you attending to the direction of your own intention? Are your actions aligned with what you truly intend? The question of meaning, on this view, is not a puzzle to be solved. It is a practice to be lived. And it begins with a single, honest question: what am I intending, in this moment, through this action, with this life?

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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