Meaning in Life vs Meaning of Life?

[spice lagoon]

What are the differences between the meaning of life and having meaning in life? Are they the same? I remember John talking about a difference but I don’t remember what that difference was.

[ivory meadow]

He probably said something about participation or something.

My take is that people that have meaning in their life don't ask for the meaning of life. The later is the sort of thing only a philosopher would ask. It is meaning and life in theory.

Sokrates probably said something about it when he talked about happy marriages vs unhappy ones. I don't really remember, but I feel bad for his wife. I feel that philosophers wives deserve some sort of compensation or something. Dunno. Or maybe they just get what they deserve.

[heavy reef]

Meaning in life is the overarching source(s) of meaning(s) which motivate(s) your actions, the sort which can withstand adversity, the application of effort, some degree of critical scrutiny from yourself and others, but also what inspires you to adapt and maintain your grip. Insofar as life is about navigating the agent-arena relationship, meaning in life is the experience of purpose or value behind that process of navigation -- which is why it breaks down under nihilism, or rather, why purposeful activity becomes difficult to sustain under nihilistic conditions. There's no point to doing things; that sense of our daily efforts having a "point", perhaps multiple points, is meaning in life.

Meaning of life, on the other hand, is the idea that life itself -- not just our own -- has some kind of overarching purpose, whether by design (e.g. from a supernatural being), or some other source (e.g., biology or evolution, though it seems like this would be a very loose or metaphorical sense of "purpose" without a being capable of formulating intent).

John's pretty clear that he's usually talking about the first sense. The second sense, the idea that life itself has some purpose in the universe, doesn't seem to be an idea he devotes much time to -- I believe he has called it a confused framing.

[spice lagoon]

Thank you, is it possible for there to be a meaning of life and not just meaning in life? Or would you say that trying to project a meaning of light from meaning in life is an egocentric projection?