What's it all about?

What is life all about really? When I was younger I often wondered what the meaning of life was and what we were supposed to do with it. As a young person I always had a strong connection with the idea behind karma and the fine balance between being a good person and being personally assertive. This begs to question: Are we put here to each do something important or have an impact on the world, however small? Even now one has to wonder what it is that makes our lives meaningful. What the measuring stick really looks like and who does the measuring. Is it having a loving, trusting relationship with one other person? Having a career that offers up the balance between fulfillment and success? Is it having a group of people around you that you can call friends? A loving family? Or could it be the rewarding feeling of helping others? The memory people have of you when your gone? Your legacy? What is the measure of a successful, full life? All of these? Do we live in a constant state of trying to achieve all things that we assume will complete us? At the end of the day should we be able to say we did all we wanted to do and experienced all that we wanted? What about regrets? What about the hours and hours we spend watching tv? Are we going to wish that we hadn’t? Would we regret the time we spent doing useless tasks when we should have been ‘living’? What about the days, weeks, months and years spent working at a job that we ‘have’ to do, not that we ‘want’ to do? Since life, as we all know, is brutally short should we all have a blueprint for a life well spent and proceed accordingly? Would we do things differently if we knew the “end date”? Would we wish we had spent more time with the people we love or more time finding people to love? Or helping others? Seeing new places or experiencing new things? Is the man who travels the world meeting new people and exploring places more satisfied than the man who never leaves his small village? Is the woman who spends countless years going to school to get a well paying dream job better off than the woman who finishes high school and works as a waitress? Are we ultimately squandering a gift? Are we recognizing in ourselves what it is that makes Our Life?