Meaningfulness

I have had a similar conversation with a couple of people in the last week where I made comment that I was tired of "meaningful" things, and not feeling up to holiday gatherings this year.  It was one of those things you say that is not entirely premeditated, but just comes out of somewhere inside your subconscious. One person agree with me, the other looked puzzled... and I started thinking "What did I mean by that?" At the same time I have been feeling very cut off from some of the experiences that do fuel me, due to some changes in the lives of some of my closest friends. This is the closest I came to knowing my own mind:

The things other people find to be meaningful (intentional gatherings for the express purpose of ritual, relationship building, spirituality, and the like) feel forced, false and pretentious to me. In my 20's and early 30's I was craving these things, but I am in a place now where those things don't hold the meaning for me that they once did... and maybe the truth is that they never really satisfied the need I had then.

Today I crave newness: new experiences, new places, new projects, not necessarily with new people, though, and that is where I find meaningfulness attaching itself to my relationships and to my inner life.  I think that is why I am so frustrated by the loss/distance/inaccessibility of certain people. I don't crave ritual and spirituality, I crave just DOING things (that don't maybe have inherent meaning) with the people that fill my life with meaning.