Human Beings are the only animal that has the capability to work out what things mean. In addition to all the sensory and stimulus response mechanisms of plants and animals we have cognition. Cognition is a powerful additional layer enabling us to evaluate information, work out 'what it means' and make choices to take care of ourselves. In evolutionary terms it is the latest addition to a developing set of self preservation apparatus. It is inevitable that such apparatus will one day ask the question 'what is the meaning of life?'
If you look at a tree over time it grows out of a seed, changes through the seasons, lives its life and the ages and dies. It is nourished by the sun, wind and rain and produces offspring to follow in its path. The tree never asks about the meaning of life. It came in to being, existed in a state of being and then was gone.
'What is the meaning of life' is a question that arises from a meaning making machine. The meaning making machine was put there to improve the chances of survival of its host. By making meaning many great advantages accrue to humans over competing life forms. Agriculture, farming, cooking, building and culture are some examples. Once you give humans this device it does not stop there but goes on to seek to make meaning of everything. It extends itself in to art, literature, music, mathematics and so on. You know from your own mind that it never stops trying to make meaning.
Everyone will reach their own conclusions on this recurring question. I overheard two wealthy men talking the other day. In their conversation about exotic holidays and new bigger homes one of them says 'I am becoming depressed again as life seems to lack meaning for me.' At the unfair end of the social scale there are people making a similar statement about their life. Everyone living in this frantic world will have their version of this statement at some point in their life.
My own conclusion to the question is that life just 'is'. Rather than chase the endless circular philosophers quest for understanding I align myself with the tree and let all the meaning making thoughts drift off me in to the wind. Life just 'is'.
