The Meaning of Life

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Hello everyone,
I want to talk about the meaning of life if that is okay.
I know this is an 'unanswerable' question (and 'unanswerable question' is an oxymoron) and I don't have a lot of experience in Philosophy, only having read some existentialism, cynics, skeptics and stoics, and epistemology. Although 'the only thing I know is that I know nothing', to quote Socrates.
So yes, the meaning of life, I was thinking, I read The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy recently, which talks about the meaning of life in a humorous way, I'm half expecting people to respond to this post with the answer 42!
Now the meaning of life is a broad and rather vague term, for instance it encompasses the meaning behind the existence of life and the meaning behind living our lives, and I suppose if you start looking at the definitions of the words 'meaning' and 'life' you can manipulate this question to ask almost anything, however in this post I want to focus on the idea of the 'meaning behind our lives' or rather the purpose of them.
I was thinking, if our lives had a definite meaning or a purpose wouldn't they then be pointless? In Indian society they have (or had, I don't know if they still have it) called Dharma, where essentially everybody has a place and can never deviate from such, e.g. if you're born a shopkeeper you are always a shopkeeper etcetera etcetera... so imagine if we discover that we are each genetically built to carry out a certain job or function in the world and so when we are all born and scientists can work out what our purpose is and assign us to that purpose; for instance they'd tell our parents to start saving up for a shop...
Wouldn't our lives then be pointless and insignificant if that's we know what we are and we have to follow that role out? That's one of the good things about life isn't it? If that we believe we can truly be something or want something we can achieve it, right?
I mean, if we knew the meaning of life, wouldn't we have to sacrifice our freedom? So surely then, it is better to live without a meaning or without knowledge of the meaning?
Does anybody else have any thoughts on this or am I just rambling ignorantly?

Any 'meaning of life' is purely subjective and arbitrary.
Use that to your advantage and ignore those who would tell you what to think.

"Life is the universe experiencing itself. "

A sentiment expressed by people like Carl Sagan, Alan Watts, and maybe even Bill Hicks. Probably the most sensible answer I've heard.

My view is that there is no meaning of life, because the whole idea of meaning and its complexities has come from humans, the only creatures capable of coming up with it. Why would humans have a meaning of life, while "lesser" animals do not?

The fact that we can come up with ideas such as The Meaning of Life is simply something that comes along with having a cerebral cortex that has grown enough to be able to do it. It just hasn't quite grown enough for us to then discard the idea

Or is the Universe a conscious People? Not a person?

If Ruveyn is part of the Universe, the part of the Universe that includes Ruveyn's brain or anyone's brain is conscious.

But yes the more this is pried into the more it maybe turn into philosophical drivel. Just saying that is the best answer I've heard.

life's an emergent property of a bunch of carbon-based chemicals.

The meaning of life is 7.

No, the meaning of life is molybdenum.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 032508.php

Let me see, to work, have babies, and die. To exist.

There is no meaning.It just is.

It's a personal question which cannot be answered in advance. Only after you're dead others will weigh if your life had any meaning. It would, of course, be another thing to ask what is the purpose of life.

The meaning of an individual life is whatever the individual assigns to it.

The meaning of life in a social context is imposed by society in some sort of communal agreement.

Beyond this, there is only speculation and fantasy.