I came to this conclusion recently: what we do with our life doesn’t matter all that much if it's just about our life. We overvalue our existence to accomplish things, and undervalue what we're already doing. As such, the key is not as to what we're doing, but how we can do it rightly: perhaps with more love; also with an understanding of our role in a grander narrative; maybe having more gratitude for our gifts and appreciating our constraints; and in the end, realizing our life wasn't about us but how we related to God and our fellow man & woman.
I've come to this posture, as I am more concerned about having a holy death than a long life full of various activities. I hope to have some more years to repent, purify, and commune. But I have no grand ambitions, or even things I need to do on some checklist. I may decide to write a book, or not. I may decide to become a contemplative hermit for a period of time. Or I may fall and grow in love with someone. In any case, I am quite fine being a tad idle; however, not in a passive/bored/checked-out sort of way, but in an enchanted way. Therefore, it doesn't seem to matter as to what—but as to how.
Recall the parting words in Middlemarch,
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
I've grown accustom to the hidden life. In fact, I wouldn't want it any other way. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be Jordan Peterson or some other thought leader and have all those eyeballs on you. I don't want any of it. If what I write influences someone along the way then I am pleased to not even know it. What I do now is prioritized as to whether or not it brings me closer to God. The grain of culture, while always offering opportunities for growth and freedom, does not become my benchmark for progress. Nor does anything else that can be measured or quantified.
If we can allow for greater Truth to infuse our being and make it our life's practice, we will be prepared for eternity. In the meantime, we must endure the spiritual battle the ego insists upon. We must counter the moment to moment ego contraction with a moment to moment intentional undoing to be closer with God. That is the meaning to life that is not ours to make. Ratzinger makes the astute point,
“Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.”