Philosophy and the Meaning of Life

I've been listening again to a radio interview I did some years ago. It was one of those programmes where listeners could ask questions. One of the questions was what I thought the meaning of life was. My reaction was to laugh and then to say that I was sorry, but that I couldn't answer this question because it was "too big" for me. I think I was rather amused by the public's persistent belief that what philosophers do is think about the meaning of life. Because that is, of course, not at all what we do. Now, however, listening to that broadcast again, I suddenly felt slightly ashamed of myself and actually of my whole profession. Why shouldn't people expect a philosopher to think about the meaning of life and to have, as a result, some, however tentative, answer to the question? This is, after all, why most of us start to ask philosophical questions in the first place, isn't it? It is the question that is at the heart of the whole philosophical enterprise. How odd then that professional philosophers shy away from this question and tend to make fun of people who ask it. It is a kind of intellectual cowardice, as if we had given up hope that this crucial question could ever be answered, or we were afraid of the kind of answer that we might find if we only looked hard enough. So it seems to me now that we shouldn't try to avoid this question, but on the contrary tackle it directly and do our best to find an answer. What does it all mean? I have no idea, but I'm determined to find out.