**Covered_in_bees **nailed it in one. There is no meaning, and any attempt to find a meaning is misguided & doomed to failure or self-delusion.
That doesn’t mean you can’t decide to behave this way or that for whatever set of reasons make sense to you. You also can have a fun time during this business of being alive for awhile. But you’re doing that for itself, not for any deeper “meaning”. Despite what you may think.
That’s also not to say that all behaviors are equally “good”, either for yourself or for others. Just to say that “meaning of life” as commonly understood has nothing to do with it.
There is no meaning in life except to the one asking the question. You apply your meaning. Delude yourself into meaning and live your meaning. But outside your interpretation of meaning there is no meaning. And while you are about that there is no purpose either…
Think about how water on earth evaporates through wind and temperature, then forms into clouds, then rains down on the earth, and repeats the cycle over and over and over - with no discernible conscious outside force ‘making it happen’. It’s just a self replicating cycle that, for all we can tell, is a perpetual motion machine.
That’s the basic definition of life. We are molecular and cellular and organism-ar(?) and at all levels there is a mechanism of self-replication. It will happen whether we care if it does or not.
What we do with our time while this is happening on an individual basis is another story…
Wow, guys. Gee whiz. <snif, sniff> …As if I wasn’t feeling small and hopelessly lost already! Well, at least I can thank the SD for validating my feelings! At least I can take solace in knowing my smallness in a vast universe is the one thing that is NOT an illusion! “Out, out, brief candle! Life is but a poor player who frets and struts upon a stage. It is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.” Nice play, Shakespeare!
It’s an interesting thing that nearly every human asks himself this question and therein lies a truism. That man is not just body and mind, but triune - body, mind and spirit. We yearn for meaning, for things to make sense. And not to just make sense as an abstract but to make personal sense for our whole being. To bring a sense of satisfaction.
I have a hunch that it expressess itself in music and rhythm. The language of the universe and of the spirit.
Those of us who need definitive answers to every question find ourselves stuck in the spirit department because it is deeply subjective. On this one we cannot depend on what we can touch, see, taste, smell or hear. Or what others can tell us. It relies on something which we are unable to measure.
But we know it when we experience it. And we see evidence of it all around us. Visit a care center for the elderly and watch, interact and listen. Some there have accomplished lives of note, yet sit in their chairs unsmiling and wishing for death. Others have suffered more than their fair share and lived lives of little note, yet they smile and welcome human interaction.
The question is kind of neat because it’s the one area in our lives in which we experience the puzzle of our true mortal makeup. We are born alone and we die alone. In between those two material events, if we can develop a self-knowledge of our spiritual nature, we can create a satisfying existence.
Don’t’ feel small and hopeless; feel relieved that there’s no secret panel with a report card, taking off points for not getting the meaning of life right. We try to make more of us, the best version possible, and survive for as long as we can. I’m not that much different from a blade of grass in that regard. Almost every impulse I’ve ever had was largely rooted in the desire to get laid and not die.
Human life itself has no essential meaning in a universal sense. As far as the universe is concerned, you don’t matter, I don’t matter, and the whole planet Earth does not matter. The universe does not care, because it has nothing to care with. The universe is not alive, it has no consciousness. Not only is there no God, there isn’t even a “universal life force” or whatever meaningless deity-euphemism new-agers are using these days.
However, human beings do matter, to each other. And that is where the meaning of human life is. Be kind to each other. Respect each other. Care for each other. Love each other. That is the stuff that matters, and that has a real meaning. The meaning of life is, at its simplest, “don’t be a selfish creep”.
Obviously, many many human beings fail to grasp this.
Suppose life is the culmination of the universe observing itself. Your individual life is nothing more than a brick, a stepping stone, toward a greater existence; a transcendence of some sort of intelligence working towards a God-like state for minds that remain indelible in the end. You, us, we, our deaths are a sacrifice: The price to pay to bring humanity, and perhaps other life that may exist elsewhere to that point. We will never share in it, but our descendants eons hence will. Unless of course, they can bring us back. Or perhaps, if our consciousness came about at least once, who’s to say it will not emerge again?
Nope, he/she’s quoting. It’s a short story by Harlan Ellison from 1968. I agree, though - cool image.
As for my answer - pretty much what Shakester said, word for word, except for the last sentence: I think there are many who grasp this, and live it, even if they don’t articulate it.
As **MeanOldLady **said, this response is exactly backwards. It is freeing and enabling to realize that the Universe is so big, and you don’t have an essential role to play according to somebody else’s idea of a script. It has gotten along fine without you for billions of years and will do so for many billions later. Not only the whole Universe, but even your small town will do just fine without you.
So do as you will. You have freedom; there is no door on your cage. Step out into the sunlight and Be.
But …
With that Universe-sized freedom comes a responsibility. And **shakester **made a pretty good shot at what that responsibility is.
You can choose to be a megalomaniacal murderous dictator; the Universe will not care a whit for the lakes of human blood you’ve spilt. Neither will there be any kind of retribution, unless you end up strung from a lamp post *al la *Mussolini.
You’re here with the rest of us. It’d be a lot better for us, and (I believe) a little bit better for you, to acknowledge that fact & play nice. But you don’t have to. The responsibility can be, and often is, shirked to greater or lesser degree. Yet the play goes on.
Gee whiz. <snif, sniff> …As if I wasn’t feeling small and hopelessly lost already! Well, at least I can thank the SD for validating my feelings! 
At least I can take solace in knowing my smallness in a vast universe is the one thing that is NOT an illusion! “Out, out, brief candle! Life is but a poor player who frets and struts upon a stage. It is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.” Nice play, Shakespeare! 
