Relief from Meaning

While reading the Wall Street Journal review of journals by the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, I was struck by the following:

We learn in the “Wartime Journals” about the momentous day in Oxford when Trevor-Roper’s realization that he no longer needed to concern himself with metaphysics lifted a burden as surely as the mist rose from Christ Church meadow that morning . . .

Yes, exactly. The sentiment described strikes me a typifying what we’re up against. It’s not all that hard to imagine what a relief it is to decide that life has no meaning other than what we give to it. Nihilism lightens life nicely, and therein is it’s appeal in the present age.