Meaning exists before the search for it, and then only after the search concludes. In between are the peculiarly human tasks: the actions that could give birth to it or illuminate its existence out of the otherwise dark expanse.
Meaning in action is only meaning’s potential. That which could be meaning is the fuel; that which realizes it is the fire upon arrival. When finally pinned down into existence, meaning is the heat source that replaces the movement towards it, which formerly kept us warm.
Insofar as the animal remains challenged (never decisively winning the daily game of survival, so never getting bored), the human remains dormant. When biological survival is in question, meaning never is.
Humanity itself is created upon the loss of the animal’s intrinsic meaning. Its recovery is always doubtful to some extent. What is faith? Faith in the eventual recovery of meaning, of something akin to (but beyond) an animal upon the hunt, or of a human still in thrall to its animal state, fully satiated by activities that are 100% consumption.
When consumption, pure consumption, loses even 1% of its luster, there you find the origin of addiction in all its varied forms, for those whose answer to the loss of animal meaning is a kind of doubling (and doubling) down. There you also find the origin of the religious drive, of humanity, and of all art.