According to Viktor Frankl1, life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.
Everyone has different ways of going through this quest. Many put their hopes of meaning in science, others in spirituality and most of us in various combinations of these two.
We yearn for something or someone explaining why. Why do things happen? In particular, bad things.
Why do they happen in specific ways? But, most of all, why do they happen to us?
I guess this is one of the reasons why religions are so appealing. They give a clear and easy answer to that why question.
A few times, I found myself before a friend in pain asking me that why question. Sometimes in words, sometimes just with their eyes.
And the only answer I could give is that I don't know.
Because that's the annoying thing about the meaning of life; "it differs from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way."
As Frankl reminds us, "man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked."
We are the ones asked.
We are the meaning of our own life.
So, ultimately the quest for meaning is a quest for ourselves.
And it's a lifelong journey.
Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust by Viktor E Frankl - this is one of the most powerful books I ever read.