I really like that poem “Ozymandias”, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The point of it is: no matter what kind of outsized impact you have on the world when you’re alive, eventually no trace of you will remain, and everything you ever were and everything you’ve ever done will be forgotten.

It’s a heavy, depressing message, but I find it to be oddly freeing. If nothing you do will matter in the very long run, then you’re free to do whatever you want. Maybe you decide that you don’t care about the people 25,000 years from now and focus instead on the people in your life right now. Maybe you make it your goal to make their lives better.

You could succumb to depression and fall into a pit of despair and heavy drug use… but if nothing matters, why not spend your time making other people’s lives better instead? It feels good to make other people feel good.

I don’t have a profound answer, and other commenters have covered my thoughts pretty well. I will share a small lesson I learned from my mom as a kid. First time wearing a new shirt, I jumped off the swing on our playset, and the hook at the end of the chain tore a big hole in my shirt. Naturally, I was upset and started crying. My mom told me, “You can either cry or you can laugh, but it doesn’t change what happened.” I’ve taken that to heart over the years and generally try to find the humor in everyday situations. Meaning of life? Nope. Just making life more entertaining.

I stopped asking myself what the meaning of life is, and started asking what I want my impact on this earth to be.

I keep coming to the same answer. I want to live a quiet comfortable life with the people I love, and when I die, I want my only legacy on this earth to be memories.

Currently falling way short of that last goal. I make a lot of trash, currently have a conventional house with a lawn, which takes ridiculous resources to maintain. Ultimately, I’d like to build an earthship that can provide food, water, and comfort for me and my wife for the rest of our lives. I want to own things that care for me, instead of being owned by things I need to care for.

you create meaning in your own life

i decided to live vicariously through trump and act like i’m winning all the time regardless of reality, like my white trash brethren

life is fun

Instead of making a post about it. I suggest you seek professional help.

what you are describing is the economic situation.

on the free market, the thing that is profitable is always the thing that there should be more of (according to market pressures). this is universally true across all branches of economy. if you open up a company that sells shoes, and nobody else has any shoes, then you can sell your product at a high profit margin. but if there are already 2 million shoes for 1 million people, then you will have a difficult time selling yours as well, so it’s not profitable for you at all.

the same happens with the “beautiful woman” example that you cited. the reason why you think that you have to be with her now, urgently, is because there is too few of them. so there should be more of them, and that’s why it’s profitable to strive to be with them, if you get what i mean. in a certain sense, by doing so, you are in fact helping to make sure that there will be more like her in the future, because by striving to be with her, you are increasing the average number of children that she is going to have.

so, you can look at things through the free market perspective, which is largely equivalent to yours, but has the added benefit that there are a lot of clever people having developed very useful tools to analyze it in the past.

Is that chess scene from The Seventh Seal? Always enjoyed seeing that clip pop up.

In terms of finding meaning; try out as many hobbies and practical skills as you can. When you find one that makes you lose track of time, run with it.

Make it your goal to improve that skill as far as you can, and allow that to provide you a meaning to the regular day to day life.

It is a blessing that life has no meaning. You can give it any meaning you want without having to delude yourself from the “right” meaning.

Your life meaning could be charity, attempting to reach the pinnacle of your hobby, teaching and empowering others, success, dismantling tyrrany, competition (like that in sports and other hobbies), creation and building, etc. Find one that you believe in, and help others to find theirs

You can choose multiple, but many is too great of a burden to carry.

I try to reason my way into uncertainty that we dont know if a meaning exists, maybe it does, we dont know for sure anything, no evidence either way, if u have to believe something, believe something that makes u happy.

Sounds like you’re in the Pessimistic Nihilist stage, you just need to process things and then progress yourself to either Absurdist Nihilist or Optimistic Nihilist

there is no meaning to life without context. Trying to find “meaning” is like walking through the forest blind. you give meaning to your life.

when I say, “the roses are beautiful,” every person provides their own meaning to what that entails. some think of red roses some yellow, others white. then the beauty is only provided by the context of the audience based entirely on their subjective associations of beauty.

the meaning of life is what you make of it, since you are your own audience.

I’m glad there isn’t a meaning to life. If there was a meaning, then I’d have to be doing that thing or be failing at existence. If no act matters, then I’m equally valid for doing my goofy nonsense as I am working hard or whatever.

Optimistic nihilism is the way to go. We make our own meaning.