I asked some well-known names for their thoughts on the ultimate existential question. Their answers were fascinating, funny – and could help us frame our days on Earth
In September 2015, I was unemployed, heartbroken and living alone in my dead grandad’s caravan, wondering what the meaning of life was. Where was I going to find happiness, or purpose, or meaning? What was the point to all of this?
Like any millennial, I turned to Google for the answers. I trawled through essays, newspaper articles, countless YouTube videos, various dictionary definitions and numerous references to the number 42, before I discovered an intriguing project carried out by the philosopher Will Durant during the 1930s. Durant had written to Ivy League presidents, Nobel prize winners, psychologists, novelists, professors, poets, scientists, artists and athletes to ask for their take on the meaning of life. His findings were collated in the book On the Meaning of Life, published in 1932.
