…is unanswerable not because life has no meaning, but because the answer is personal.
Part of growing up is to answer the question for yourself.
For me, part of the meaning of life is to walk in the woods and see as much as I can. Part of the meaning of life is to understand the trauma of my family of origin and take steps forward with my daughter. Part of the meaning of life is to be ambitious and creative and build something lasting and useful, but to not do so in isolation, to be integrated in culture and people I respect.
Exactly zero of those may apply to you or anyone else. I’ve been here for 42 years and those are things that seem steady to me.
But another person could find radically different meaning.
That’s what I think these attempts to define life’s meaning in an essay are doomed to fail. The meaning of life is not a thing in the world. It’s a process we each can embark on, if we so choose.