It's not WHAT is the meaning of life? But WHO is the author of Life? Answer: God Jesus Christ *The Way *The truth *The Life
There are as many answers to this question as there are people to ask. The meaning of life is a very personal concept and everyone has to find his/her own answer. This can be charity, family, friends, science, work, god, education, nature... But because you are an intelligent being and able to reflect on yourself and your life the truth I found is: You can pick ANY meaning of life. Your choice. What you decide to give your life meaning, it will. You can also change this meaning throughout your life, it's not a fixed decision. But please pick one (or some) that is good for you and not destructive
Since we are organisms that have been shaped by natural selection, increasing our reproductive success is the meaning of life. But of course we don’t think this meaning and act accordingly in our daily lives. We don’t have this purpose (increasing our reproductive success) consciously. Natural selection builds some proximate purposes on top of that. Procuring our basic necessities, having a social milieu and a place in it, attracting the opposite sex by the things that we achieve. If we actively pursue these things and be successful, we feel confident and satisfied. Of course we have some emotional needs, and needs that are associated with some transcendantale meaning. We need to love and to be loved, we need to care and to be cared, we care and think about our place in the universe. I think all these emotional needs also stem from the fact that we are social animals. These emotions make us care about our loved ones. Transcendantale feelings or religious experiences might be a side-effect of our big brains.
Personally, my opinion is to simply "try my best". This may sound cliche, but the point being here is that if my goal is to improve myself, I will find every single way that I can do so, and I will attempt it. I don't really care about the results, what matters to me is that I tried. I understand that in the grand scheme of things, my life, your life, and basically all our lives are meaningless. We are just a bunch of stick figures on this deserted rock travelling through the cosmos. To an alien, our problems would seem trivial, outright stupid. So, to prevent yourself from having an existential crisis, just try your best. I like to think of it this way. Imagine you were to be on the brink of death right now. Now think, are you satisfied with the way you have lived? If you are, then most likely you are living a healthy lifestyle (this is a very subjective matter). If not, try to live in a way that will prevent regrets in the future. Some may bring up the argument that, well, how about my things in the past that I regret, how do you reckon I fix that? I believe that this statement doesn't contradict my previous argument, as part of an improvement in lifestyle, is in fact, being able to accept your past mistakes and move on. Answer: Live in a way whereat death is merely an inconvenience.
I wrote this super ridiculous five-page vent to a wily sociologist teacher I had once. He quoted a Dhali Lama in his response, saying "The point of life is to live"... Kinda anticlimatic lol, but I think what wise cats that say shit like that mean is that if you're living in accordance with your intuition, and truly pursuing meaningful, passionate stuff you honestly give a shit about that takes a lotta damn work to reflect on and actually figure out, then the question fades away, because you're in meaning, you're in life, rather than sitting in the bleachers. Like this character Charley says in Perks of Being a Wallflower, "Sitting on the sideline offers a unique experience, but there's a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor". Figure out what you care about... And participate! Join the dance. Onward
This isn't a direct answer, but watch a guy called Rupert Spira on YouTube and explore the idea of Nonduality. Also watch his talks with Bernado Kastrup