When I ponder The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything... and I do often ponder The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything... I usually end up thinking about blood cells.
Blood cells have a mission. They pick up oxygen at one point in their journey, and then they exchange that oxygen for carbon dioxide at the midpoint of their journey... and then they go back to where they started and do it all over again. Technically, blood cells don't even "go" anywhere under their own power... they are just moved along by the stream of plasma that's powered by the heart.
Blood cells are indispensible for our lives, but an individual blood cell is not. A single cell can be lost without measurably altering the outcome of our lives... but if we lose most of our blood cells we die.
Blood cells have no concept of any of this. They have no awareness of "the meaning" of what they do... they simply perform the task they are built for from the time they are born until the time that they die.
The Universe is vast and complex and full of many, many things... and we happen to be some of those things. I'd like to think that we have a mission - just like those blood cells - but what that mission is remains a mystery. The only real difference between me and a blood cell is that I can wonder what my mission is.
As an individual, my existence is probably as important to "something" as that of a blood cell to my body - no more, no less. Whatever it is that "depends" on me to accomplish my mission will survive whether or not I do what I am supposed to do - but I'm thinking that it won't survive unless most of us do what we're supposed to do.
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