The short answer is that there is no "meaning of life" in the bigger picture.

The more pragmatic answer is that only those organisms which survive and grow can exist to ask the question, therefore it always reduces to promotion of subjective values as effectively as possible.

"Pleasure, love and grace are not man's to control. They come from identifying with life, and rejoicing in its splendor, vitality, and beauty. Although pleasure, love and grace are ephemeral, trust them and follow them, for they contain the meaning of life." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am, I know I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe.
- Buckminster Fuller

You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.
- Alan Watts

Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.
- Alan Watts

If Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong. That is to say, if Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong to believe that a new car will make you as happy as you imagine. You are wrong to believe that a new kitchen will make you happy for as long as you imagine. You are wrong to think that you will be more unhappy with a big single setback (a broken wrist, a broken heart) than with a lesser chronic one (a trick knee, a tense marriage). You are wrong to assume that job failure will be crushing. You are wrong to expect that a death in the family will leave you bereft for year upon year, forever and ever. You are even wrong to reckon that a cheeseburger you order in a restaurant -- this week, next week, a year from now, it doesn't really matter when -- will definitely hit the spot. That's because when it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, you are most likely wrong.

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.
- Anais Nin

Freedom Evolves
By Daniel Dennett
Copyright 2003

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Copyright 2002

By Steven Pinker

I saw Solaris last weekend and enjoyed the movie. It affected me both emotionally and intellectually. Although dumbed down for popular consumption, it did touch upon many of the issues of identity, consciousness and the limits of science as intended by Stanislaw Lem in his 1961 novel later made into a 1972 movie and this 2002 remake.

The Good Life is one inspired by Love and guided by Knowledge
- Bertrand Russell

Kiln People
By David Brin
Copyright 2002

This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day; Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), 'Hamlet,' Act I, Scene iii

Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, Existence is simply illusion.
- Mister Rogers

There are living systems; there is no "living matter".
- Jacques Lucien Monod