Not a theory. Not a philosophical argument involving Ancient Greeks, quantum physics or a suspiciously expensive retreat in the mountains. The actual answer.
I've spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about it. I've read books that I didn't understand, talked to people who claimed to understand it, and spent several years assuming that someone, somewhere, had already figured it out and simply hadn't bothered to tell me.
It turns out the answer is both much simpler and much stranger than I expected.
The first thing I discovered is that we've been asking the wrong question.
"What is the meaning of life?" makes it sound as though meaning is something sitting somewhere waiting to be discovered. As though there's a correct answer printed on a stone tablet, or hidden at the back of the universe.