I highly recommend folks read Ecclesiastes, which opens with "Everything Is Meaningless". It's a philosophical book on what matters in life (and what doesn't).

  What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?
  Generations come and generations go,
    but the earth remains forever.
  No one remembers the former generations,
    and even those yet to come
  will not be remembered
    by those who follow them.