When you're experiencing anxiety, it's natural to look for the cause. Sometimes you'll be able to point to a specific situation that's making you anxious: an upcoming trip, a medical issue, a struggling family member.

But much of the time there is no identifiable reason for feeling anxious. As best you can tell, all is well—and yet it doesn't feel that way. You might have a vague feeling of dread or a free-floating sense of foreboding. Perhaps your body is humming with an anxious energy that seems unprovoked.

What might account for anxiety with no clear cause? Many of the explanations have to do with the nature of life itself.

No one can explain where life and the universe came from or even fundamentally what they are. This mystery can strike us with "wonder and awe," says philosopher Samir Chopra, author of the recent book Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide. But "there is an element of fear and terror" as well, he says. Life itself is "infected with a kind of strangeness that is beautiful and terrifying at the same time."

Accordingly, we feel anxious not only about specific unknowns in our immediate future, but also about deeper questions regarding how we got here and what our fate will be.

Part of what makes the ultimate mystery manageable is the structure we impose on life—what Chopra calls a "veil of meaning" based on naming and classifying objects and experiences: my house, your wife, this generation. But on some level, we recognize that these imposed labels and categories are arbitrary.

"When you start stripping away those titles of........

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