For context: This is my first post here, and I’m moderately new to the realm of questioning meaning. I’ve found myself agreeing with both the ideals of the Absurdist and Existentialist. Here is a quote from myself.
“I follow the ideal of self-proposed meaning. I decided to look at life in my hands and envision a life with meaning. A flawed life that restricts freedom. “The meaningless is half the fun” is how I put it. So, I gave it my own meaning, that I can openly abide or avoid at my whim. My meaning I decided upon is to understand why I asked. What is it that’s asking? How does a consciousness ask? How do I protect it?
This evolved into a critical engagement with dementia and a key appeal in opposing it, fighting it, in a strive to protect the freedom of the meaningless.”
I see this quote to be more existentialist, but I do find myself to agree with the idea that, with life having no innate meaning, the meaning I grant myself is inevitably useless, or made for my own entertainment.
Any opinions or input?
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Talking about the meaning in life – there’s two ways to look at this. We can either be referring to the whole meaning of the entire universe, or we can be talking about one single life. The purpose of all that exists, as an aggregate? I’m not sure.
But I think Satre, with his existentialism, and Camus, with his absurdism, were more or less referring to one single life. Existentialism tells us to make our own meaning in life, making your life matter. Absurdism begins at the same starting point – life is inherently meaningless – but its solution is to accept that premise and just have fun.
I think I have at least some elements of these philosophies in my worldview, but not totally. Firstly, I think any human life connected to another human life has inherent meaning in the connection. When people say “It won’t matter in a hundred years” I want to respond, “But it matters now!”
If you think about it, maybe it is absurd that we are here. And, looking at the big picture, I can roll my eyes at a lot of human behavior. Absurd, indeed.
Yes, yet, my life has meaning in the connections I make.
What to you is meaning of life?
What do you mean by “self-proposed meaning”? Do you mean you sat down one day and told yourself, x = the meaning of my life.
The existentialist slogan: existence before essence/we’re condemned to be free/life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced
The absurdist mantra: We must imagine Sisyphus happy
A possible median would be to 1) accept the absurd and 2) work on your essence. You do exist, hopefully 
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.