As I mentioned in a recent post on The Mastering Life Path I’ve decided to pursue – nothing in this life actually has any meaning in and of itself – except the meaning which you choose to give that thing.

As with most people, for most of my life I have unconsciously been trying to figure out what is meaningful in life and what isn’t.  Growing up in Poland for example, I remember one of the most common things I heard adults saying as a kid was that “Health is most important.  Everything else is secondary.”  It’s a very common Polish saying that I probably heard fifty thousand times before the age of 9.

Now, there is nothing wrong with that, but I’m just giving an example of how society, and our close relationships with peers, friends, and family members influence what we deem as important and what we give meaning to in life.  There are countless layers upon layers of social conditioning that govern what we give meaning to in our daily life.

What would happen, however, if you started to make conscious choices as to what you assign meaning to?  Meaning, instead of just going with the programming you’ve been raised with, you actually chose what you wished to apply meaning to.

That is exactly what I’ve been experimenting with lately.

Assigning Meaning to Seemingly Meaningless Things

As an experiment, I wanted to see what would happen if I began to apply meaning to something that typically doesn’t have a lot of meaning to most people.  For my experiment I chose the Warhammer 40k table top game and it’s amazing range of miniature models.

The reason I chose these as my “project” is because they represent something I already enjoyed playing with in the past, but also because I wanted to experiment with something that a lot of people would consider totally meaningless.  I mean, for Pete’s sake I’m talking about nothing more than little tiny plastic toy soldiers, right?

That is precisely why I am having so much fun with this.  Because, unlike seemingly “more important” things like saving the planet, or developing spiritually, or losing weight or raising kids or making millions of dollars – playing with little Warhammer 40k miniatures should be rather meaningless, right?

What Really Is Important Anyways?

As I mentioned above, I grew up being conditioned to value health.  Also based on my childhood I developed a deep desire to build wealth and to be an entrepreneur.  These are all things that deep down have meant a lot to me.  I know many other people who have grown up with different sets of values where they developed a lot of meaning around post secondary education, or around raising a family, or about investing in real estate, or any number of other things we deem as “important” things to do in your life.

Well, who is the judge who decides whether investing time, effort and money into post secondary education is more important than investing that same energy into collecting Warhammer 40k miniatures?

What would happen if your kid came to you and said that instead of spending his money on college, he wants to instead start collecting Warhammer models?  Would you freak out?

Of course I’m just using Warhammer miniatures as an example, but the same thing can be applied to other things like wanting to be an artist, a painter, collecting comic books, building robots, making movies, growing organic gardens, teaching martial arts classes, designing clothes, or running a store dedicated to lollipops.  I mean anything goes here, I’m just using Warhammer as my example.

Who decides what’s important and life?  Why are some people impressed when someone tells them they have a PhD, while others just feel sorry for them for the debt they’ve gotten themselves into.

Why do some people value their jobs and wrap their entire life’s meaning around being their job position, while others can’t stand to work for someone else and any job title – regardless how prestigious – translates into “corporate slave” for them?

In reality, there is no meaning to anything except the meaning we choose to give to that thing.

Is It Possible to Create Meaning?

Being aware of the fact that society, our friends, family, peers and the media influence what we assign meaning to is great, but even if we are aware of this – is it possible to change what we assign meaning to in life?

Absolutely.

This is exactly what I’ve been doing with the world of Warhammer 40k.

I have taken something that previously had very little meaning to me, outside of being a hobby I was previously inspired to play with for a while and I’ve turned it into something that is growing in meaning for me on a daily basis.

I started off by purchasing the Assault on Black Reach starter set and I’ve begun diving into the amazingly rich universe of Warhammer 40k.

The lore and depth of the Warhammer 40k universe is absolutely amazing.  I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this world and already I’m totally captivated by it.

In the universe of Warhammer 40k, you can collect your own army of miniatures.  You can customize your army to suit your style of play.  You can build the miniatures to be customized to your liking, choosing the types of miniatures that will make up your army, the types of weapons they will use etc.  You can paint your army using a huge variety of pre-defined color schemes which represent different chapters within the army, or you can invent your own chapters including your own color schemes.  You can build custom terrain for your army to do battle on.  The depth in variety and customization that’s possible is incredible.

The Warhammer 40k universe is also always expanding, with lore and back stories coming out on a regular basis to add to the depth of the universe even more.

The thing is that you can see Warhammer 40k for the amazingly incredible world that it really is, created and supported by a fan base of incredibly bright and passionate people — or you can see them as just little pieces of plastic.  The choice is yours.

What makes life awesome is that if you decided to, you can choose what you apply meaning to in your life.  Whether that be having a beautifully sculpted, muscular body, or a huge multi-billion dollar business, or whether you want to collect, build and paint the most amazing Warhammer 40k army, or a million other things in between.  It’s totally your choice.

I’m not going to try to convince you or anyone else in your life what you apply meaning to.  Whatever floats your boat, I’m happy for you.  The thing that I would like to awaken you to is the fact that it is a choice you have if you choose to make that choice.  You don’t have to live your life according to the values and according to the things that your peers, friends, parents, or society has tried to tell you is important.

It’s your life.

Live like it.

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