In the book The Existentialist’s Survival Guide, philosopher Gordon Marino makes the following point: even if we understand the cause of mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, these conditions can still be rich in meaning. The cause and the meaning need not be related.

I think this is a very powerful perspective on the world.

For example, take religion. In Christianity, at least according to The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries (Valeriy A. Alikin), the Eucharist / the Lord’s Supper does not go back to the historical Jesus himself. Rather, this was put into Jesus’ mouth (hehe) retroactively as the story of the Last Supper by the early Christian community associated with the synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke). However, the non-historical nature of the Last Supper, the Eucharist itself is still rich in meaning. For many Christians, including myself, it is a central ritual that expresses (in one way or another) a connection to God, to Jesus, and to the Christian community as a whole. The cause of this ritual’s existence need not interfere with this deep meaning.

More mundane examples might be in the meaning that we ascribe to our day-to-day work. If I were to honestly trace my professional history, it would involve numerous accidents of history - teachers I liked that pushed me in one direction, friends in classes who pushed me in another, books I read around the time of key decisions such as choosing a thesis topic. So the fact that I work primarily on fish welfare, say, is caused by an array of historical accidents. But this need not interfere with the deep meaning and value I find in this work.

Likewise, people who get tattooed often find that the meaning of a given tattoo changes over time, even when the tattoo remains the same and unchanged (see The Social Semiotics of Tattoos: Skin and Self by Chris William Martin).

There is a distinction between this idea and motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is a pitfall, most frequently encountered in logical reasoning and decision-making, where one’s preferred outcome is given undue preference by way of ad hoc justification and favouritism. This irrational fallacy needs to be avoided, especially in high-stakes, complex decisions such as policy.

Rather, finding meaning in things can improve one’s life and even act as a source of creative inspiration. To use the example of mental illness, even if anxiety is caused by some factor in one’s environment, brain, or whatever, the thoughts associated with anxiety can be a powerful source of ideas for how to improve society. To use the example of the Lord’s Supper, even if this ritual originates as a local cultural phenomenon rather than with the life of Jesus, seeing meaning in this ritual can turn the act of eating bread - even alone, in one’s kitchen - into an opportunity to focus on compassion and to reflect on the suffering of others.