The Point at Which Meaning Is Abandoned
Meaning is rarely rejected outright.
More often, it is set down.
Not because it was false, but because it became heavy. Not because it failed, but because the work required to sustain it could no longer be met.
This is the point of fatigue.
Fatigue as Structural, Not Personal
Fatigue is not a moral weakness. It is not a lack of sincerity, courage, or care.
Fatigue arises because attention is finite and labour accumulates.
To stay open, to resist closure, to return again and again without resolution — these demands compound. Over time, the cost becomes visible.
Meaning does not disappear when we stop believing in it.
It disappears when we are too tired to keep attending.
Drift
When attention falters, meaning does not vanish immediately.
It drifts.
Practices remain in place, but their force weakens. Words continue to be spoken, rituals enacted, works revisited — yet something has thinned. Engagement becomes partial. Presence becomes intermittent.
Drift is the slow conversion of practice into habit.
It is not betrayal. It is erosion.
The Seduction of Closure
At this point, closure begins to look attractive.
Closure promises relief. It offers an end to labour. It stabilises what was once open and allows it to be handled without cost.
Systems, doctrines, explanations, and answers all provide this relief. They gather meaning into forms that can be managed, transmitted, and defended.
Closure does not announce itself as abandonment.
It announces itself as resolution.
Why Closure Feels Responsible
The desire to close meaning often presents as maturity.
Enough ambiguity.
Enough openness.
Enough waiting.
Now it is time to decide, to systematise, to teach, to settle.
But what is settled no longer demands attention. What no longer demands attention no longer lives.
Closure conserves form by sacrificing vitality.
Failure Without Redemption
This is where failure appears — not as productivity, not as virtue, not as a lesson.
Failure here is exhaustion.
It is the moment when the work required to keep meaning alive exceeds available attention.
Nothing is learned from this failure.
Nothing is redeemed.
Meaning is simply allowed to close.
Implication
Fatigue, drift, and closure are not errors to be eliminated.
They are pressures to be recognised.
The question is not how to avoid them, but how to respond without pretending they are something else.
The next episode will examine a common response to this pressure: the attempt to delegate the work of meaning to institutions — and why this attempt cannot succeed.
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