Outsourcing Meaning: A Remedy for Absurdity and Existential Angst

When the universe offers no answers, religion steps in with meaning, comfort, and ritual — but not without questions and contradictions.

To outsource meaning is to relinquish the burden of self-authorship.

Arun Kumar

Summary: Here we explore the task of meaning-making and religious outsourcing as a solution. It examines how faith offers psychological relief and rituals to reinforce belief. In this paradigm, suffering and other awkward questions are rationalized by some means. We also acknowledge the limitations of such frameworks.

If your life affords the luxury of mental space to contemplate the relationship between your ephemeral existence and the universe, you are likely to encounter the unsettling realization of the absurdity of your situation.

This absurdity arises not only from the sheer disparity of scales — your fleeting presence in time and space set against the vastness of the cosmos — but from something more disquieting: the universe, which made your existence possible, offers no guidance on why you are here or whether there was any purpose behind your creation. It remains silent, indifferent, and unyielding to questions or inquiry for a meaning.

You come to realize that you have been thrust into an arena without being told the nature of the game, the rules of engagement, or the meaning behind the battles you are destined to fight. In those moments, you cannot help but mutter, “This is just absurd.”

From this realization of absurdity emerges existential angst — a diffuse yet persistent unease, a gnawing dread that the veil of meaning draped over your daily actions may fall at any moment to reveal that there is nothing behind. The routines you follow, the goals you pursue, the values you uphold, suddenly all begin to shimmer with uncertainty. You start to suspect that your choices, your rituals, your ambitions might be nothing more than an elaborate charade, performed on a stage whose audience is either absent, indifferent, or worse — distracted, scrolling through their smartphones. It is existential angst born of a missing narrative, a lack of direction in the unfolding progression of your life.

This confrontation with absurdity is not new. It reverberated through the works of Camus, Kierkegaard, and Sartre — each wrestling with the tension between human existence, our longing for meaning, and the universe’s persistent refusal to provide it. Across cultures and centuries, we have devised other responses to make getting out of bed manageable. Some responses are deeply personal, others collective and all center around easing the burden of our existential predicament by imbuing our life with meaning and purpose. One such creative response is to outsource the task of meaning-making to a designer: a being beyond us, imagined as capable of assigning purpose to the universe and to our place within it.

Outsourcing the Meaning of Our Existence

To outsource meaning is to relinquish the existential burden of self-authorship for crafting a personal narrative that imbues life with purpose; a task that is not trivial. Instead, one entrusts that responsibility to a higher intelligence. In this framework, the universe, and its evolution, is not a chaotic accident but a deliberate creation. Our existence is not incidental, but intentional. The designer — often referred to as God — is imagined as possessing capabilities far beyond human comprehension. This being not only created the universe but continues to guide its unfolding, keeping tabs on the bazillion intricacies that ripple across time and space and keeping it all moving along an envisioned trajectory.

This solution offers psychological relief. It transforms existential angst into belief. If our lives are part of a divine plan, then suffering carries purpose, injustice awaits resolution, and death is merely a transition rather than an end. The absurdity loses its sting, and the angst is soothed by the assurance of a meaning.

Organized Religion as a Manifestation of Outsourcing

This outsourcing of meaning forms the backbone of organized religion. Most religious traditions posit a creator who imbues the universe with purpose and provides moral guidance. Whether it is the Abrahamic God, the Brahman of Hinduism, or the Tao of Taoism, the designer — however conceived — is central to the religious worldview.

Religion institutionalizes the outsourcing of meaning. It offers rituals to reinforce belief, scriptures to codify purpose, and communities to sustain faith. The act of prayer, the rhythm of liturgy, the architecture of sacred spaces — often infused with the scent of incense to bring in a visceral feeling of some transcendental presence — serve to anchor the outsourced meaning in the fabric of daily life. Through faith, religion addresses questions that reason struggles to resolve, offering coherence where logic falters and comfort where uncertainty reigns.

But There Are Cracks

Yet the outsourcing solution is not without its awkward questions, and at times it stands on shaky ground requiring continuous reinforcement to sustain its foundation. If a designer created the universe, why is suffering so widespread? Why do inequality, injustice, and cruelty persist? Why is the world not a utopia? And more provocatively, why would such a being choose to create a universe at all? Was it a grand experiment, or a cosmic Colosseum for its entertainment?

Religious traditions offer a range of responses. Some frame suffering as a test of faith, a crucible for spiritual growth. Others interpret it as the consequence of free will (and making choices against the guidance from the deity) or karmic debt. Still others promise future rewards, enlightenment, and liberation for those who endure. The answers begin to resemble a progression through levels and challenges like in a video game, where each trial must be overcome to unlock the promised reward at the end.

These answers may offer comfort, but they also strain credulity. The scale and randomness of suffering defy tidy explanations. They raise the possibility that outsourcing meaning may be less a metaphysical truth than a psychological necessity, a construct designed to soothe, rather than to explain.

The Universal Accessibility

Despite its limitations, the outsourcing solution has been remarkably successful. If I were to wager, I would say that most people gravitate toward it for reasons of birth or social conditioning. After all, how else can we explain the geographic clustering of religious affiliation, where vast populations converge around the same spiritual framework? Many adopt this path without ever undergoing the existential journey, without muttering “this is absurd,” or feeling the angst that often follows such a realization. Only a fraction of the population is born again, finding faith as a solution after searching (and failing) elsewhere.

Its universality suggests that it may be the easier option — more accessible, more socially reinforced, and less cognitively challenging. Unlike the do-it-yourself model, which requires philosophical introspection and existential courage, outsourcing can be adopted passively. One can be born into a religious tradition, inducted through family and culture, and never confront the abyss of absurdity directly.

This accessibility has advantages. It allows meaning to be inherited rather than invented. It offers a ready-made narrative that can be personalized without being constructed from scratch. It provides a sense of belonging, a moral compass, and a cosmic context, all without demanding existential struggle and heroism.

Recap

Outsourcing meaning to a designer is a clever, and a widely successful human response to the realization of absurdity and the existential angst that follows. It offers comfort, coherence, and community. It transforms the silence of the universe into the voice of a god.

To outsource is to choose faith over doubt, mystery over clarity, and belonging over solitude. It is a valid choice, and for many, a deeply comforting one. Who are we to judge the soundness of this path, when the universe offers no absolute yardsticks for judgment and leaves the task to us? Just as it is reasonable to embrace faith, it is equally valid to pursue other paths to rein in absurdity and soothe existential angst.

The choice is yours to make.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

 

Absurdity and Angst: Exploring Two Moods of Being

A meditation on absurdity and angst — two moods that shape our search for meaning in a silent, indifferent universe.

If absurdity is the slapstick humor existence offers, angst is its silent fog — something existence must occasionally walk through.

Arun Kumar

Summary: We explore the quiet tension between absurdity and existential angst — two moods that arise from our search for meaning in an indifferent universe. Through personal reflection about happenings in life, we examine how absurdity may provoke laughter or resignation, angst lingers as a fog of unease, demanding deeper contemplation.

Perhaps it is just me, but I know and feel absurdity far more viscerally than angst. Absurdity leaps out from the folds of daily life, often with a kind of comical clarity, while angst lurks in the shadows — diffuse, elusive, harder to name. Absurdity is the punchline of reality’s joke played on us; angst is the quiet dread that there may be no joke at all to enliven the circumstance.

Let us begin with definitions. Absurdity, as the dictionary puts it, is “the quality or state of being ridiculous or wildly unreasonable.” It arises from the mismatch between our expectations and what reality delivers — a jarring incongruity that prompts us to mutter, “This is absurd.” And indeed, examples abound.

You go to the beach on a sunny day, no forecast of rain, and yet a rogue cloud builds directly overhead. Within minutes, you are drenched, scrambling to save your belongings from a ten-minute deluge. Absurd.

You drive forty minutes to a warehouse store for a couple of bottles of Chianti Classico you have recently come to enjoy. But the shelf is empty for the first time, and just when you were looking forward to savoring its aroma that evening. The long drive, the time spent, and the thwarted anticipation all seem absurd.

You leave early for a doctor’s appointment, carefully navigating unexpectedly heavy traffic, and arrive just in time only to wait another hour because they are running late. The whole sequence of events feels absurd.

These moments are neither tragic nor deeply consequential, nor are they particularly unsettling. They simply remind us of the universe’s indifference to our intentions. Absurdity arises from the collision between our desire for order and the world’s refusal to cooperate. It is a microcosm of what Albert Camus described as “the confrontation between the human need for meaning and the unreasonable silence of the world towards that need.” The absurd lies in the persistent, unanswered need for meaning from the very universe that made our existence possible.

Angst, by contrast, is harder to pin down — at least for me. The dictionary defines it as “a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general.” It is a vague sensation that, even when everything appears normal, something ominous looms just beyond perception. It is not fear of anything specific, but a diffuse uneasy sense that something is missing, though you cannot quite say what.

Real-life examples of angst are harder to enumerate, less accessible than those of absurdity. You wake up on a Sunday morning with no obligations; you look forward to enjoying a day without commitment. An hour later, however, you start to feel a strange restlessness. You aimlessly wander through the house, pick up a book, put it down. You do not quite know what to do with the time affluence the day has offered, and its weight feels heavy. That is the feeling of angst.

You have reached retirement after decades of work, financial planning, and anticipation of life ahead. The calendar is open, the pressure is gone, and yet… a strange unease sets in. You wonder: What now? What will give my days a meaning without deadlines or deliverables? The feeling is more than boredom; it is a deeper disquiet, a sense that although some essential ingredient is missing, you cannot quite name it. That is angst.

You are awake at 2 a.m. — not jolted by a nightmare but stirred by a vague sense that something is not right. You lie there, staring at the ceiling, turning over your relationships, your choices, your future. There is no crisis, no clear problem, just a quiet, persistent unease. You feel untethered, as if the ground beneath your life is shifting, or might shift without warning. That is angst.

If absurdity is the slapstick humor existence offers, angst is its silent fog — something existence must occasionally walk through. Angst does not announce itself with thunder or empty shelves; it drifts in during moments of stillness, when the scaffolding of what once seemed certain, or desirable begins to tremble.

Now, what of existential angst?

The term “existential” refers to our existence — the finite slice of time between birth and death. It is a span so brief it barely registers against the vast backdrop of cosmic time. The absurdity of existence is, in some ways, is easy to grasp: all that we do in that fleeting interval — our struggles, ambitions, joys, and suffering — seems to amount to nothing in the end. We build, we strive, we love, we win, we lose, and then we vanish. The universe that made our existence possible does not blink, and that indifference feels absurd.

Existential angst is the emotional response to recognizing the absurdity of our condition. It is the unease that arises from realizing that life holds no inherent meaning. It is not merely the fear of death, but the disquiet of living without a guaranteed purpose. It is the sense that something essential is missing, perhaps justification for existence itself.

Unlike absurdity, which often provokes laughter or resignation, existential angst invites reflection and can lead to a quiet despair born of not knowing what to do, or how to make sense of our existence.

Perhaps, in the future when instances of angst occur, when the fog rolls in, it will be worth pausing and internalizing such events. Over time, this practice may deepen our visceral understanding of angst and help us grasp its contours more clearly.

And, by understanding it better, we may find a way to live in peace with it.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

 

A Bus Ride in Tuscany

On a Tuscan bus ride, a retired traveler reflects on aging, mortality, and the quiet wisdom of an eighty-nine-year-old companion.

Wisdom cannot be captured in words. It lives in the way we choose to find joy and meaning.

Arun Kumar

Summary: A reflective essay set on a bus ride in Tuscany, where we contemplate aging, mortality, and joy through the quiet presence of an eighty-nine-year-old fellow traveler. Retirement, time affluence, and the joy of lived experience converge in a meditation on how to shape meaning in the later chapters of life.

I am sitting in a bus travelling down some highway in Tuscany. It feels oddly formal to call this a vacation. Since retiring in early 2025, my days — unlike the tightly scheduled ones of working life — have taken on a loose, fluid rhythm. In theory, I am perpetually free. The calendar is mine to shape. I am, as they say, the master of my own domain.

Yet the word “vacation” [vacacioun, “freedom from obligations, leisure, release” (from some activity or occupation)] carries the scent of escape — a vacating from something, a sanctioned pause from toil, a brief reprieve from the relentless pursuit of productivity. But in retirement, when the calendar is no longer crowded and the demands have softened, what exactly am I escaping from?

Perhaps some words just become a matter of habit. Perhaps their continued use is an inertia that becomes a part of our psyche. And so, the term “vacation” persists — not because it fits, but because it gestures toward a shift, a departure, a moment of intentional difference. Maybe trips like this will always wear that label.

This trip to Italy is our first formal journey since my retirement. We chose an arranged tour which is an act of deliberate surrender. After years of self-planned travel, this was a planned outsourcing of effort. Let someone else manage the trains, the hotels, the museum tickets. Let us simply be passengers, not planners. And so, we find ourselves on a bus with forty-eight other souls.

Among our fellow travelers is Margaret. She will turn eighty-nine in a few days, and when she does, we will all gather to sing “Happy Birthday” to her. But even before the celebration, Margaret has already become a quiet beacon. She is not merely present — she is luminous. There is something in her bearing that draws my attention, something both inspiring and elusive.

Watching her, I begin to wonder: What is her perspective on life? What does the day ahead mean to someone who has lived nine decades? Does she wake with plans, or with a quiet openness to whatever the day may bring? Does her mind drift far into the future, or does it mostly rest in the now — because at her age, “far into the future” is no longer be a meaningful concept.

And what of joy — does hers carry the weight of mortality, or has that awareness becomes a kind of liberation? A quiet acknowledgment: I do not have many days left, so why not savor what remains?

I am sixty-seven. Twenty-two years younger than Margaret, and I feel the gravitational pull of her presence — an invitation to imagine my own future self. If I am fortunate enough to reach her age, how will I view the days that remain? Will I sip wine with the same anticipation I do now? Will I still seek novelty, or will I find comfort in repetition? Will I fear the end, or will I have made peace with it?

These questions accompany me as we drive from Montecatini to Cinque Terre, the Tuscan hills rolling past the window like a slow procession of time. I find myself half-listening to the guide’s commentary, half-drifting into reverie. I imagine sitting with Margaret at a seaside café — coffee and croissant between us, the Mediterranean breeze tousling our hair. I would ask her about her inner landscape. What has changed in her thinking over the years? What has softened, what has sharpened? What does she know now that she did not at 67?

Perhaps she would tell me that joy becomes simpler with age. That the grandeur of ambition fades, and the small pleasures — sunlight on stone, the taste of a ripe peach — are the pleasures one seeks. Perhaps she would say that mortality, once feared, has become a quiet presence. Not ominous but liberating.

Or perhaps she would say nothing at all. Perhaps her wisdom cannot be captured in words. It lives in the way she looks at the world, in the way she smiles at her fellow passengers, in the way she chooses to be delighted.

In contemplating Margaret, I am really contemplating myself and my future self. Retirement has given me time affluence, but affluence did not come with wisdom on utilizing it. For not to be wasted, it must be shaped and questioned. And so, I ask: How do I want to age? Not just physically, but philosophically and spiritually. What kind of an older person do I hope to become? In doing that, I want to learn her secret.

As the bus winds its way toward the coast of Cinque Terre, I feel a quite gratitude. For accidentally knowing Margaret. For Tuscany. For the awareness of questions that have no easy answers. For the serendipitous chance to imagine a future self who is not afraid of endings, but who finds a beginning in each day.

In a few days, we will all disperse to go our own ways and will say farewells. The vision of Margret will be my memory from this vacation.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

When Boundaries Fade

Cultivate a quiet union
where the boundary
between self and world
dissolves.

In that stillness,
life and death
unfold as one continuum—
our passing
no more than the act
of stepping through
a door.