Do we live in a world that is meaningful and makes sense?

I have to ask myself a few questions about the question.

I can't help it.

So, here goes:

Does something have to make sense in order for it to be meaningful? Conversely, does something have to be meaningful in order for it to make sense?

I really don't think so. Some things that I find meaningful seem to make no sense whatsoever to most other people. So many things and constructs that allegedly make sense are utterly meaningless to me. 'Sense' and 'meaning' can go hand in hand, but they certainly don't have to, and sometimes it's frankly impossible for them to.

Does life make sense to me? No. Hell no.

I don't mean the fact that we physically exist (though I guess you could say that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either) -- I mean life as in what we are living at this moment, the events and situations that we go through, the emotions that we feel. A lot of this is simply unexplainable, whether because it is so beautiful, so cruel, so completely bewildering, or something else entirely.

I can't really say that anything I do makes sense, or that it serves some objective function. There have been times where I have felt so hopeless, so worthless because it seemed like I had no purpose. Like my existence was just superfluous.

I came to realize that perhaps existence is inexplicable, but that doesn't mean it has to lack meaning -- you have to let yourself be open to meaning if you expect it to present itself to you, and sometimes you have to seek it. I guess it doesn't have to have meaning, either. But sometimes it's already there right in front of us, or even inside of us.

And-- if you truly believe that there is no meaning anywhere whatsoever, why keep going? Even in our darkest moments, I think we must see that something could be out there.

In the movie, Caterine states that life is "chaos and meaninglessness," but obviously her beliefs are meaningful to her, because she's working to spread them. If life was completely pointless, why would she continue to live it? Tommy, similarly, asserts that life has no real meaning, but why would sweatshops and petroleum matter to him if that was the case? As his girlfriend says, "If nothing matters, how can I matter?"

He is clearly affected by her leaving, and being kept away from his daughter, so clearly his family is important to him. Tommy also says that people can't really connect to each other, but he and Albert simultaneously become closer in the process of following Caterine; just as Albert's attempt to be "liberated" from Brad leads to him discovering that they are ultimately bonded.

Life is made up of all these contradictions. It makes sense, it doesn't make sense, it's meaningful, it's not meaningful, you feel like you can't go on, but you do. All of it is true and none of it is true. I think this is why it succeeds as a comedy -- life isn't explainable, humor isn't explainable...and we just keep taking ourselves so seriously. :)

At the end of I ♥ HUCKABEES, Albert recognizes that it's all made up of "two overlapping, fractured philosophies." He's gone through believing that it's all connected and believing that it's all not, believing that it's all meaningful and believing that it's all not, and is left with the understanding that, well, it's kind of both and kind of neither.

I agree.