I used to say this sort of thing a lot. It's a variation of the main idea behind existential nihilism: that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, and any mean

I used to say this sort of thing a lot. It's a variation of the main idea behind existential nihilism: that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, and any meaning you assign to it is arbitrary. As far as I could tell it was correct but it bothered me enough that I started reading philosophy and looking for counter-arguments. I never discovered the meaning of life, but have definitely changed my point of view. I now think the belief that life is meaningless is a consequence of epistemic arrogance, not a rational conclusion. How can we say existence has no meaning when we don't really understand existence in the first place? There's way too much we don't understand about the universe, the laws which govern it, and even ourselves to draw any firm conclusions. I do know that hundreds of great thinkers have spent many collective man-centuries considering and writing about this question, and come up with far more interesting output than if they'd just punted on the question. I think if we punt it says more about us than about the question itself. I'm partial to what is arguably Nietzsche's main idea, or how I interpret it anyway: that as society's belief in religion wanes, we've barely even started to discover what we're really here for. The greatest challenge in our era of civilization is deciding whether or not we're ready to find out.