personally I think that if my kids have a happier life than I did, then my life had some purpose.

It depends what the individual determines as meaningful. If one is considering the eschatological process of learning and study, one must inevitably determine that life is a linear process.

If however one considers an ontological approach a linear philosophy is irrelevant, indeed time could stop but the ontological process can continue.

Therefore life is meaningless for linearity in an ontological context and just as meaningless for the ontologist in an eschatological frame of reference.