This is not the answer I wanted. Maybe that is why it took me so long to find it. When I first gained enough awareness to seek something greater than myself to guide my desires I was looking for something real (unchanging) that clearly identified action(s) to take. While not as specific as I would have liked, where I landed is better than the shifting, subjective landscape I have until recently been existing in.
The title of this post is self reflexive. Life belongs to meaning just as much as meaning belongs to life. There is a third player that is omitted, though, desire. Neither life nor meaning nor desire can exist without the others. Life is temporal and only perpetuated by desires motivating beings to take actions that keep them alive. Things can only gain meaning in the context of desire. Without meaning there is no action to take and life cannot be maintained.
A tree, for example, desires to live. Sunlight is one of the things that perpetuates a tree’s life. Sunlight therefore becomes desirable for the tree and thereby becomes meaningful. The tree takes action growing and contorting itself when necessary to capture sunlight.
As human beings we know life, meaning and desire can become much more complex than in the example above, but the rules are the same. So, if we are looking for meaning in life the most important things become the preconditions for meaning that meaning is also a precondition for, life and desire. Not terribly specific, but something.
It is almost shocking that the meaning of life being life can be revelatory, but we get caught up in validating our desires and past actions and the consequences of that statement drastically alters them, making it hard to fully understand and accept. An example of a consequence is that my diet has subsequently shifted to mostly vegan.