I thought it was 42 Neil?

When asked, by a 6-year old boy, what the meaning of life was Neil deGrasse Tyson at an event at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre replied:

“So — what is the meaning of life? I think people ask that question on the assumption that ‘meaning’ is something you can look for and go, ‘Here it is, I found it. Here’s the meaning. I’ve been looking for.’ That scenario, however, doesn’t consider the possibility that ‘meaning’ is something you create. You manufacture it for yourself and for others.

So when I think of ‘meaning’ in life, I ask, ‘Did I learn something today that I didn’t know yesterday, bringing me a little closer to knowing all that can be known in the universe?’ If I live a day and I don’t know a little more than I did the day before, I think I wasted that day. So the people who, at the end of the school year, say ‘The summer! I don’t have to think anymore!’ — I just don’t know. To think brings you closer to nature. To learn how things work gives you power to influence events. Gives you power to help people who may need it — to help yourself and your trajectory.

So when I think of the meaning of life, that’s not an eternal and unanswerable question — to me, that’s in arm’s reach of me everyday. So to you, at age six-and-three-quarters, may I suggest that you explore nature as much as you possibly can. And occasionally that means getting your clothes dirty because you might want to jump into puddles and your parents don’t want you to do that. You tell them that I gave you permission.”

Wow Neil. Aside from the fact that might just be a bit too wordy for the 6 year old, that's a brilliant answer. I mean, seriously, it's simple yet profound. This also happens to be my philosophy, I'm always trying to grok the universe. Every day I'm saying "need input!" and constantly looking for new things to learn.

All day at work I listen to podcasts at 2x until I've caught up on that day's and then I move on to books I've bought on Audible (my library is creeping up on 300 titles) that I listen to at 1.25x. When I come home I'm always tinkering, on forums, reading blogs, contemplating all that I've taken in.

I can't even go out on a first date without going on a 25 minute rant to the poor girl how I want the governments of Earth to give me a trillion dollars or more so I can start hardcore developing an asteroid mining program, so that I can have enough resources to start buying up all the smartest minds and thinkers in dozens of fields and give them all the resources they need so that we can first copy a human brain, then develop a way to restore a human brain in a freshly cloned/grown body AND so that we can download them into digital brains which would then allow us to develop singular intelligence entities that could rapidly solve things like FTL travel, zero point or super-efficient energy, subspace communications etc. I then go on to explain I need all of this done so I can effectively have immortality so I can live long enough to begin to understand the unfathomable number of things we do not presently understand about existence. I mean, there are countless things we don't understand about our own bodies, let alone the planet, let alone the solar system. Our solar system is an insignificant portion of our galaxy which is in turn a tiny dot in our universe and our universe is likely just a sliver of something even larger.

I count any day that I learn something new a success. To me the meaning of life is becoming not unlike God. I feel cheated having this temporary body, and I only hope that when it expires my consciousness is allowed to travel time and space for eternity figuring out the mysteries of existence on my own instead of just having them gifted to me by my creator.