The best meaning of life I've got (apart from being terminally averse to taking Jesus as my personal saviour) is that we exist to pass on our genetic material. From my pious parental perspective, I've never quite warmed to the wilfully childless. I'm polite in their company, and don't tell them that their life seems deeply pointless -- but Fitzgerald's words privately come to mind, about those women "lost in the nothingness of heirless beauty"...