The quick and meaty answer you are looking for, is: It is your rise to become a Great Being, by means of knowledge, adventure, and resulting wisdom.

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To digress, if what you really want to know is why we exist, is because the universe is constantly mixing things in a very large number of places.

And all kinds of things emerge, in all kinds of places, out of what we know as fundamental principles of physics and chemistry, to paraphrase Murray Gell-Mann.

The conditions for life emerged, the way conditions for a perfect day emerge sometimes.

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To resume, the long answer to the Meaning Of Life question is that there is no one singe meaning, because that would be an insult to your uniqueness.

This feels a little off-topic, because what is the meaning of life, just sounds like a fine question, but it is kind of silly, though I respond with a serious answer to give you the answer you are really looking for.

Cult leaders dream about selling a singe meaning, they could save a lot of money on those seminar pamphlets.

Why, all you’d need would be a printing press, right?

Schools, too sell a meaning, good grades, means good job, and they get paid peddling insipid crap.

That ensures you will have a midlife crisis, where you air out your regrets, and buy an expensive car.

To be clear, this is such a hot question, that entire fake industries and imaginary religions arose around it.

Be careful, who you listen to, see what their advice does to others, look at debt…

Including its hidden version, a little bit of coin from a lot of people, and often tax free.

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Now, you will be glad to know that once you get over the fakers, the search for meaning of life that is meaningful to you, personally.

Starts with a beautiful adventure, that involves all the things that interest you, this adventure will create new and higher interests along the way.

You may have but five curiosities at start, and quickly develop a thousand as you learn about them.

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Schools, try to force a preset script on you, it is a betrayal, as you can’t effectively learn what you are not interested in.

If you are young, you should never forget, that you can’t learn what you don’t care about.

This way you will be able to see how they are forcing you to memorize, so that they can make you perform on tests, like an actor.

When you are interested in something, your mind is already adapted, for comprehending all the information about it and around it.

You can’t learn a thing, if you are not curious about it, because to really learn means to return to it throughout your entire life.

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Here self education emerges as a powerful antidote, to what schools are trying to do to you.

When you build your own educational path forward, it will only revolve around the things that your mind is ready for.

Curiosities that will lead to other curiosities, that you will be certain to return to as they are part of your personality.

This is the knowledge part, of your way towards understanding your meaning.

Once you are ready, you will become ravenous for narrated books, without which you’d have to restart everything at zero.

With which, you can inherit entire lifetimes of wisdom, and rise to sand on shoulders of giants, sometimes continuing their work.

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You maybe somewhat surprised that Adventure must be combined with Knowledge, in order to begin reinventing and synthesizing your own wisdom.

Adventure is about pulling you away from existing indoctrination, and showing you that you are just as capable as anyone.

Indoctrination isn’t just about religion, or bad cultures of families, but also the assumptions that you yourself are making.

For example, a lot of people forget that memorization is not education, and associate their intelligence, with the grades they are getting.

This type of forgetfulness is induced by threats of being held back, laughed at or being ridiculed, and not having a diploma to get a job.

So here fraudulent educational institutions, that sell an impression of education, and force you into temporary memorization without useful comprehension.

Are threatening you, with you not being able to get a job, all the while ensuring that you will not rise out of poverty by cursing you ineffective education.

Months of adventure, will remove the threats, will help you see, that ineffective education is meaningless education.

It is as imaginary as the thousands of gods, all the fraudsters have invented for some gain, even if just to say in business.

If you continue stressing out about grades, and cramming, and performing, then get a job, and a complex life, then you will never really read a book.

In stress, under constant threat, our minds are incapable of, extracting, and and adopting wisdom from books, we get too busy, life is too chaotic.

This is where the midlife crisis comes in, where people can’t handle it, and due to their lack of wisdom, they end up running in circles doing childish things.

Adventure will snap you out of the stressful routines, and make your mind compatible with inheriting wisdom from books.

If you’ve ever taken a long vacation, you actually might have noticed, a small urge, to get a book, to get knowledge.

This is the urge, that adventure greatly multiples.

We are not in fact being poetic, when we say closed minded, we are describing a person too stressed out, too freaked out to grow up.

It is of some note, that religions, often create a fear, that adds to the stress of a person, and almost always, cut them off from reading more than one book, and thus induce uncertainty that prevents learning for real.

And you should be just as careful with schools, because if they can get away with it, schools will tolerate drug use as that will increase their overall score.

Adventure is a critical component of your mental health, and thus an important part, of you building the meaning of your life.

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As to Wisdom, you are not supposed start from zero, because you will just walk a road that has been walked countess times before.

You need thousands of narrated books, to raise you to the plateau, where all the world’s great beings retired, and continue their work, in your own way.

I am unable to explain wisdom to you in a way that is better, than actually listening to thousands of wise, well narrated books.

But let me clarify something, a wisdom, is not a quote such as: “I think therefore I am”, which means since I can control my thoughts I am real.

But rather your getting to know the author, in this case Descartes, and where he lived, and what the world was like, and above all, what his way of thinking were.

Walt Whitman beautifully describes this in his poem Kosmos (with a K), by saying, and I paraphrase, understanding things by subtle analogies to other things.

So when you learn about Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Ayn Rand for example, your inheritance of their ways of thinking, will enable you to think by subtle analogy to some of their creations.

When you start combining inherited wisdom, and create layers of your own observations.

It can be said that you then synthesize new wisdom, new ways of navigating complexity of our universe.

But these pathways must come from warriors that have either fought to repair their mistakes, or beings who lived their lives well, who loved life.

It is better to seek non-fiction, than made up stories, where the content of a character is completely imaginary, un-integrated and incoherent or fill of contradictions.

It is important to search for wisdom books about real people, the authors of great books, always have a clear message, with the aim to help you.

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Finally, as you walk through life, expanding on your curiosities, gaining more awareness, knowledge and wisdom.

You will not aim to travel a path less traveled by, but in your authenticity our path, will be just yours, as unique as you.

Looking at all your poems, and books, artworks, paintings, computer programs even, will then revel the meaning you are asking about.

It will be as unique as you, after a long time, your works as a reminder, of who you were.

Each time your works are examined as some length, a kind of an immortal soul or spirit, along with an invitation to a friendship will emerge.

Granting you a kind of immortality, granting humanity a priceless treasure, and many a student shoulders to stand on.