What is the meaning of life?

Since no one else has written it yet, I’m obligated to say “42.”

I think that the meaning in life is finding what life means to you

This meme was inspired by an encounter with a nihilistic memer touting (with no discernible trace of irony) the concept of #NoLivesMatter. I told him this:

Life doesn’t have to be bleak and miserable. It can be full of wonder, opportunity, connection, and meaning — regardless of whether we’re remembered in the long run by strangers we’ve never met.

As a younger man, I had bouts of nihilism like your own.

As I grew older, I came to recognize the inherent value of life, and to appreciate the resources that others (family, friends, teachers) had devoted into educating and bettering me. I resolved to use whatever talents I had to try to educate, better, and comfort others.

We are all trapped together on this ball of rock hurtling through space. One day, its cosmic fate is to be burned up in the expanding radius and intensifying rays of the sun, at which point all life on earth will die. That is, if humanity does not wipe itself and the world’s other species out by other means first.

Life may be a waste for all of us in the end. But the only way to be certain of wasting our lives in the meantime is to fail to connect.

noun, plural lives [lahyvz] .
1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
2. the sum of the distinguishing phenomena of organisms, especially metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to environment.
the animate existence or period of animate existence of an individual:
3. to risk one's life; a short life and a merry one.
4.a corresponding state, existence, or principle of existence conceived of as belonging to the soul:
eternal life.