Both Fake Chest Guy and Donkeykong are wrong...
Neither transient wealth nor the transient feeling we derive from our interaction with our fellow primates have any lasting, symbolic meaning. If something along those lines is even remotely achieveable (which is doubtful) it lies within the acquisition of genuine knowledge; that is how we can be part of something greater than ourselves, by seeking to understand the mysteries of the cosmos, we rise above our smallness and pettiness as apes trapped on this mudball we call earth. If you seek genuine knowledge then you will have a piece of eternity as well, for just as matter can neither be created nor destroyed so too is the knowledge and comprehension of that matter. Wealth is useful but fleeting; one can spend too much, waste and it feeds an endless cycle of wanting and yearning, never to be sated, as Fake Chest Guy himself has conceded. Family, relationships and the other illusory things Donkeykong referenced are equally useful but just as ephemeral as wealth; lovers come and go, children die, friends lose touch and when the inevitable happens and such a fate is thrust upon us, we clamor for more of the same, always in want, never satisfied. However in giving yourself to knowledge you become a part of something greater and though you shall pass away and be rendered to dust by the passage of time, that knowledge exists eternally independent of you. It does not require your validation, nor that of other homo sapiens. Time and again man has committed himself to seek meaning, which intrinsically does not exist. Neither can it be created, for that is the deception we too often fall for. Some search for immortality in deeds, as did raging Achilles but ultimately in vain; human deeds are lost to time as surely as our species shall be. Joy, wealth, love; fleeting and passing. Knowledge is greater than you are and to gather knowledge is to engage in what one may call a noble task; when houses stand in rubble and our remains are but scattered dust and bones and nothing is left of this civilisation; when the sun consumes this world and all that was here is no more, the knowledge that men strove for shall ever be and those men ennobled their meager existence by dedicating themselves to that eternal knowledge.
