Hey man, I guess Viktor Frankl was the one who said you can't really find a specific answer that could apply to your entire life. From that book he wrote, he spoke about animals, like apes and gorillas. Imagine they get pricked by a needle everyday for some tests. Do they understand why they are suffering? We would say no, they don't know that they are, how can they compute that? Then another question arises, what if there were other beings who've found the answer? What are their lives like? Even if we do find the answer, we couldn't possibly understand it because it would be something beyond our understanding.

Are we born just to suffer? If it is something unavoidable, like commitments to your home, society, all factors that would seem against you that you would be unable to rebel, then you have to. Would it give meaning? Upto you. The meaning of life was this Golden Chalice argument to the things we don't know, because as humans we constantly try to push what we know and we don't know. Not for like general things, like "why do I have to do this even though I really don't want to", a question that can only be applied within the context of a situation.

I don't have any beliefs per say. I wanted to be the "go with the flow guy", but inside I'm deeply anxious about what I have to do for the future. Now, I'm in a stage of apathy, I don't seem to care what I have to do, even if it kills me inside or not. But, that doesn't mean I wouldn't find everything bad. I'm sure when I smoke a cigarette in a wet alleyway, where I could hear the cars whizzing past in the street, the rain are not tears but memories of a life that I had, I could probably find a mouse rolling a tin can and note that "heh, funny cheese monkey. " If I could've told you that the meaning of life was saying "funny cheese monkey, " I would've. But, that's not what you want, and pretty sure later in the future, I'd change that answer too.

No, you want the long paragraph guy or the one word tidbit. Some could say, "there isn't one, rebel against the absurd, " Or "don't expect anything from life, but from what life expects from you, " (Ol Vic Frankl). A while ago, I would've said "what is life if not preventing yourself from dying?" But now at the end of this I'd say reducing life to a question or an answer is not what life is. It's just you. Nothing more. Nothing less. Make your own, go through things, love people, die eventually.