It’s whatever you decide it to be. You are right - nothing matters in reality, but you can assign importance to things yourselves and as you said “amuse yourself to death”.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced

The fear of death is something engrained in life. For some, the fear of death is higher than the fear of suffering in life.

Man, could you imagine if there was a single meaning to life? That would be miserable. Every single action you do would have to be for fulfilling that one single purpose and if you were doing anything else you’d be failing. Want to play video games? You’re not fulfilling The Purpose. Eating, sleeping, taking a shit, sure, it’s to keep you going for The Purpose, but it’s also failing to work on it in that moment. Taking a vacation would be blasphemous.

Meaning is something applied to things better by people, and I think I prefer it that way.

There is none. And that is incredibly liberating. Choose your own path and do what makes you feel good (without harming others).

At a macro level, it’s the preservation of our species. On a micro level, it whatever makes you happy and doesn’t hurt others (because that would conflict with macro).

Being alive is the only time when you can influence something, and as such, when your actions mean something.

When you’re dead, it’s over. There could be an opportunity for you to make something better for others or for your own enjoyment - but now all chances are gone.

So, why letting go of this amazing ability?

TBH, yeah, that’s what I consider the point of my life - amusing myself until death. Whatever I do will not matter in 100, 1000 or 1000000 years which is all just a blip in the scale of the universe. So basically, I’m just trying to have fun and help other people have fun. Of course I realize that I’m incredibly privileged to live a life where I don’t have to worry about too much and I can think about fun and not surviving. I experienced difficult periods in my life and the answer to this question was much, much harder back then.

That’s the beauty. Given that there is no goal, you are able to define your own.

Literally? There is no reason for life. Which scares people, so they develop superstition (theology) or ascribe it to emotions (happiness, suffering, etc). There is no reason, for life. The reason for life existing or how it came to be is certainly up for debate, but there is no why. We are alive, we are conscious. Eventually our bodies give out on us, and our life ends.

I work at a hospital and most of the patients there are definitely older than dirt people getting surgeries just to extend their life a few years or even months. Most of the time it is family members making those decisions because they don’t want or know how to say goodbye. We have had patients that effectively died, but the family insists on keeping their organs alive with machines in the hopes that they wake up.

As for the meaning of life? I think it is 100% to entertain ourselves until death. Even if there was a greater meaning created by some deity, we’re probably not able to understand it anymore than a donkey could understand calculus. I personally could never trust any human to tell me who or what god is and/or wants. And god has yet to reveal theirself to me…

Idk if there is really a meaning. I think it’s all kinda chaos. So much of life is out of our control, and I think meaning is something people assign to themselves to gain a sense of control.

Try to be grateful for whatever you have, embrace the things you enjoy doing and maximize your time with other people that get you. When you find yourself doing something that you enjoy doing try to really be present in moment. Think about how you’re feeling and why you’re feeling that way. Even the way your body physically feels in that moment.

If you want to find an easy meaning or purpose try to remember even little waves can travel pretty far. Try to be kind and patient with others when they make mistakes, leave things a little better than they were when you found them, that kind of thing.

Happiness.

I read something recently that explained every moment was like a mini death (referring to how Change is the only constant) and as such everything we do is to understand and integrate death-like processes and to see them as one cohesive whole, if we extrapolate this pattern to the process of death as a human we begin to realize that our death is so much more likely to be some pattern like that where we must question if the life we had was ever so subjectively experienced to begin with, at that point we begin to realize that our death is not to be feared any more than we should fear taking off our clothes to change them when they are dirty.

In my view, we are here because the universe wants to understand itself.

I find solace in that.

I hope this helps your existential dread.