I did come across a solution to your ponderings once and it goes like this.
If you are truly troubled by the meaning of your existence? Then I suggest that tonight you vacate your comfortable bed and sleep rough. If after a few nights of kipping outdoors you are still troubled? Then renounce all your possessions, home, car, family, etc. and take to permanently sleeping outside. Taking in only what sustenance that you can beg, steal or forage. If after several weeks of this life you are still troubled? Then, my friend, that says you have been secretly sneaking back to your home to eat and sleep.

1. Your meaning and purpose is to live life to the fullest of your potential. Set for yourself lofty goals and pursue them with gusto.
2. When you die just like everyone else on earth, you will cease to be alive, need I describe what will happen to your body or every one else's for that matter?
3. Life is happening all around you, so live as best as you can, try leaving this planet better than how you received it. That's about it. Pretty simple.

“There is NO purpose OF life. There IS purpose IN life.”-Dan Barker

No one ever said there was meaning to anything. You can waste a lot of time and miss out a lot of life if you start the quest of why expecting an answer.

Perhaps, after Millenia of questioning by really smart minds no one has come up with an answer, perhaps the answer is obvious - there is no answer!

And those are the very same questions that drive some folks to religion. Go figure.

Welcome to the asylum. Enjoy your stay.

Your life has whatever "meaning" you feel like giving it.
The biggest thing to remember is that it doesn't HAVE to have any meaning at all.
Or that the meaning can change from day to day.

I'm certainly no philosopher, but after giving this issue much thought off and on over the years, I've concluded that it's entirely up to us to give meaning and purpose to our own lives, which is sometimes easier said than done. Especially when it comes down to the existential angst that has set in since I'm now in my 70,s. We're told that life is a precious gift, but I must admit that it doesn't much feel that way to me. I try and make the best of it, but am at a loss as how to make the most of it. I have no concerns about what happens after I die, and I'm quite looking forward to it.

Religion and philosophy, two peas in a pod. Both are ways humans waste time and energy attempting to divine meaning out of that which is meaningless. How did I get here, where am I going, what comes next? Pretty simple really
My parents had unprotected sex, one of the millions of sperms found a viable egg, which implanted itself in mom’s uterus and developed into me. It’s a process which repeats itself millions of times in one form or another every day, in every living creature. Once born, if we make it that far (since many fertilized eggs don’t), we live life in the constraints of the society we were born into in some fashion.
At some point, after the egg is fertilized and the being created, regardless of species, it dies, ceases to exist as a being, and life goes on without it. Anything else is built on the fantasy of mankind, whose brain evolved to the point where it needed to formulate some surreal reason to explain the complexity of existence. Unlike all other animals that, as far as I know, just live their lives without the need to exhaust themselves trying to figure out why. Does anyone wonder if a rat born in a sewer wonders why they were put in that environment rather than on a nice farm instead? Does a parrot born in captivity wish it was living in a jungle free? We humans spend much of our lives concerned with our places in life compared to others or imagining what we might have after our body is done its time, rather than enjoying what we already have right now.

Meaning and purpose. Just because we wish for these does not mean they exist outside of our minds. Assigning your own meaning and purpose to your life will be every bit as valid as having some ordained "life coach" doing it for you.

Seriously...The only constant is change and of all species we are the one with the LEAST self-control. We can't even stop ourselves from destroying the only planet we have. That is reality...all else is a delusion.

Our delusion is that we are a noble species when in fact, as E.O. Wilson points out, we are breeding exponentially like BACTERIA, not PRIMATES. If I live to age 80, there will 4 times as many people as when I was born. Sheer cultural insanity! Our intentions are meaningless when we haven't yet achieved the natural wisdom of lower primates to control our NUMBERS. Thus, 40 years ago, my brother and I decided not to father children. So maybe that was our purpose in life, eh?

If we had italics, I would not use caps. I am stressing, not shouting.

As George Carlin said, "Bullshit is every where".

Your meaning and your purpose will be found in your values. What matters to you?

i think i think.
therefore i think i am,
i think.

I've seen a lot of noted actors and actresses have died this year . There are those w ho died previously who have left interesting films behind . I still enjoy watching Heath Ledger in " The Knight's Tale ," for instance . We're here due to a tremendous long list of accidents . One celled animals , eventually grew into multicelled fish , which , according to Darwin , eventually crawled upon the land , and through many generations developed into many other assorted species . Eventually a horde of sperms swam to an egg , and one of them got in , and made you . What you chose to do with your life as you gained independence , is 100% up to you . In all probability , after a generation or two , no one will know who you were , however , you will have left your foot prints upon this earth . It may be the work you did as a part of our society . It could be a wasteful life that left the earth in worse shape than when you got here . It could be trees , or animals , or flowers , that you planted that you will leave behind for others to enjoy , for many generations . But what you eave behind is up to you .

everyone faces that dilemma, not necessarily in connection with losing religion. it is an individual matter. you find your own meaning and purpose in life, for we only have one, it is short in the grand scheme of things, and we live on only in the memories of others.

g

Your meaning and purpose is whatever you decide you want it to be. Meaning is not "out there" somewhere, it's within you. Plants and animals don't care or need meaning. Only humans. We decide what our meaning is. When we die, we are dead, end of story. But we all have lasting affects on other people, and on what has happened and what will happen. We can't even imagine all the affects we have had in this world. That's our only legacy.

We are ALL here simply because at some time the sperm from your biological father entered the vagina of your soon to be biological mother, squeezed through the narrow opening of the cervix, up through her uterus, on into her Fallopian tube/s to meet up with her ovum, they connected and, VOILA, her ovum was fertilised and grew to become a foetus then a baby.
A quite banal way of putting it all, I know, but none-the-less that is how it happens and what your 'purpose' in life is/will be is solely up to you, nothing more, nothing less.

You will never fulfill your real purpose cause man messed that up years ago. The moment we decided we were better than all other animals, we ceased to improve our own dynamic and function. Our purpose is to adapt and mutate, in an endless cycle of reproduction until we perfect our species within its environment. We made the environment adapt to us, which is why its falling apart now. We are a result of trial and error. We either survive or die, walk or crawl, based on how well we can adapt and reproduce. Your conscienceness has nothing to do with your purpose.

Your meaning and purpose is up to you; it’s whatever you make it.

What happens when we die? The same thing that was happening before you were born.

What the hell is really happening in the meantime? A combination of whatever we like and whatever we can’t avoid. The beautiful chaos of life.

Beautiful fairy tales? According to Christianity god turned up and we tortured and murdered him, because it was good for us. Not much beauty there. Religions are based on violence, repression, fear, guilt and ignorance. Whatever we might make of life and reality, religions offer nothing to help. They're just in the way.

I can tell you were you came from! You are reproductive unit caused by mating act. The same way any animal or fish is made

Someone once asked me what I think happens to the soul when we die. I said, "the same thing that happens to the music when the radio blows a fuse." Life is the gift, if we manage not to screw it up beyond all recognition. We don't know how we became conscious, or what that even really means. All we really know is that we get to live in our bodies for a time. I always liked this perspective: [archive.ttbook.org]

Life is such a gift. We need to show appreciation in every way we can...e.g. by taking care of ourselves, others who are also a gift to us, the planet that provides us with the means of life, and other animals who deserve life as much as we.

You said it in the first sentence. It’s a mystery that no one knows. All of reality is one huge mystery. I sincerely admire your post, and I like the picture. That picture expresses joy, wonder, awe and hope.

We truly are in abject ignorance. For example, the world we see around us is not real but symbolic. All we ever experience with our bodies are our own nervous systems. Ultimate reality beyond cannot be sensed or understood with normal means. However, in the background there is conscious awareness. No one alive understands how conscious awareness arises or even what it is, yet it frames our every experience and gives us everything—it is us, a miracle of infinite value IMO. The procession of organic bodies comes and goes but consciousness just is, not subject to time. Consciousness in fact creates time, along with everything else in our bubble of illusion.

Not a day goes by but I say to myself “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS ALL ABOUT???”

Most searches for meaning and purpose appear to be conforming to expectation of other people or even organized religions. The only meaningfull meaning and purpose is one you create for yourself.