Asking for the meaning of life is a category error.

Asking for the color of a kilogram, the desires of a rock, or the dreams of a couch is similar. It's fun to mix up categories to see if you can find strange and unusual associations, but when you take it as a serious question, it's useless.

In particular, purpose and meaning imply a mind with an intent to either accomplish something or communicate something. For the moment, the only entity that can imbue a purpose or meaning is a human being. The purpose of an axe is to chop things because a human created it with the intent to chop things. The meaning of a siren is a warning that an emergency vehicle is approaching rapidly. That's because a human being designed that device to convey that meaning.

Lives as a whole are not created for a purpose or meaning except for those freaky rare occasions where people have kids to be organ donors or to sell into slavery.

The lives of people are full of lots of intentions and desires, and those can be turned into purposes and meanings, but it's up to the person to do that.

If you believe that a supernatural being creates each and every human life, then it's conceivable, though not necessarily true, that they created a particular life for a particular purpose. You can also believe that their intentions for your life were among the best possibilities that you could pursue, but then you would need to know what they actually intended. And if they are not around to tell you, you are most likely wasting your time. It's like trying to guess what a person you don't know is thinking with very few circumstantial cues. You might be right, but you're probably not, and it's going to mostly be a waste of time.

If you believe that a supernatural being is responsible for the contents of some book and that that supernatural being also created you, then yes, go read that book. In fact, memorize it, each and every word cover to cover, and use that for your purpose if it's important for you to have an externally dictated purpose and meaning. If I believed that the creator of the universe with a special purpose for me had written it down in a book I would make that book and it's understanding the centerpiece of my life, virtually the only thing I put effort into.

If you are not so sure, you can just treat holy books the way most people do, and occasionally half-remember a passage somewhere that seems somewhat relevant to your life and create your own meaning and purpose around that. Note that you can usually do better half-assing with poetry, fiction, drama, words from the wise, philosophy, etc., for this purpose. There's nothing wrong with this, in fact I think it's a wise way to diversify yourself and hedge your bets, but it's at loggerheads with faith in Scripture.

For me, purpose and meaning is mostly being honest with myself about what I really care about for this world—what is practical and what I can create over the long term. It's a process of discovery, but it's definitely not hopeless, and I feel like I'm part of the way there. Like many people, I find purpose in meaning in helping people, certain social connections, learning, working on myself, helping out the world more generally, having new experiences and seeing new opportunities open up bird