What is The Meaning of Life

Ever since I was a child, I’ve carried with me a restless curiosity about the world. It stayed with me through my teenage years and now into adulthood. I’ve always been drawn to solving the questions that intrigues me. But one question in particular still lingers unanswered: What is the meaning of my existence?

Everyone around me seems to be finding their way. As they grow older, their paths become clearer. Careers take shape, passions deepen, and life begins to settle into rhythm. But for me, it’s the opposite. I remember wanting to be a pop star, a music producer, an astronaut, an entrepreneur etc. My dreams as a child were bold, even if they didn’t align with the other kids around me. But as I grow older, those dreams begin to fade, like fog dissolving under sunlight.

In what felt like a blink of an eye, I am now 24. Having lost those ambitions along the way, I don’t know what excites me anymore. I don’t know why I’m here. The more I try to chase purpose, the more it slips away. It feels like falling into a rabbit hole of questions, each one leading further from clarity. The harder I search, the further I drift from meaning and it feels like I’m losing my mind.

Growing up in a dysfunctional family gave me a strong urge to succeed. As a young girl, I promised myself that when I got older, I would escape and rewrite my story. I always believed I was meant to be different. That I was meant to stand out. To change the world, make something of myself. I’d lay in bed at night making promises to myself, convinced that someday I’d look back to this period in my life and say I made it. But now, as I’m writing this, I don’t know what to tell the younger version of me. I haven’t kept the promises I made to her, and that fills me with excruciating shame.

This feeling of being lost, of not measuring up, has drained life of all its color. Some nights I lie awake wondering: What’s the point of it all? Why was I brought into this world just to decay when time runs out? At times I even toy with the idea that maybe none of this is real. Maybe we’re in a simulation, like The Matrix. And if that’s true, I would be the main character and I should be able to choose how this life unfolds for me.

But even then, I’m back to the same question: what is my purpose? How can I become the person my younger self believed I would be, when I no longer know who I am…