We can give our lives meaning and decide how we will live. Relationships then become life affirming. Because we are able to stand alone and are not dependent we can establish relationships based on fulfillment not depravation. No matter how closely we relate to another individual, there remains a final unbridgeable gap. There is a conflict between the awareness of our fundamental isolation and the wish to be protected, to merge and to be apart of a larger whole.
All humans search for a sense of significance and purpose in life.
We all can have an internally derived value system that does provide a meaningful life. We have to find our own values and not those imposed upon us. Many people perceive the world as meaningless. Meaningless in life leads to emptiness and hollowness, or a condition that Frankl called the existential vacuum. People have to create their own meaning.