Meaning is like a whole bunch of other things very relative, so I agree with your point.
But I understand OP as well. Some other potential entity only a dozen light years away might not care much about our human art, love, war or suffering. Maybe the interest in alien life is unique to us because we are social in nature. We don't know other civilization's cultures. Maybe they know where we are but actively choose to ignore us. We can't even deal with or comprehend cultures a few hundred miles away from us. It makes no sense to try and preemptively comprehend the intent of the rest of the universe.
But for us as humans, our lives are usually maximally meaningful often to the point where it's egocentric and selfish. I am sure you can think of a few people who deserve to die rather than you. After all the selection of ostracized or hated people is very large. However, in the grand scheme of things you can only claim to look at local optima and we walk through history like a greedy algorithm.
Only when the full scale of events are known, when humanity's history becomes static either by ending or stagnating, we are truly able to make conclusions whether events in our time are good or bad. And even then it doesn't mean that it actually matters.
It makes the meaning of "meaning" self-referential. Usually, when we say that something has meaning, we mean it is significant to something external to it. If the most external thing at all does not consider our existence significant, then "meaning" becomes entirely subjective: something is defined to have meaning if we convince ourselves it does. Some may think that's not much. Others think that if that's as far as we can go, then that is everything.
I am not sure I understand what it is you're saying, but sure, for many people something is meaningful if it is significant to other people, or even themselves. Others find that less satisfying, requiring a more absolute meaning.
Anecdotally speaking most people get through their day to day tasks thinking that somehow it all matters in the end.
If nothing really matters, and best you can do is be your own little streetlight(to paraphase Kubrick) you are faced with the problem on what to choose as your meaning.
I still don't see why meaning is null in the case that the universe isn't a conscious agent. Meanings are aspects of us, not of the Universal Consciousness or whatever.
But I understand OP as well. Some other potential entity only a dozen light years away might not care much about our human art, love, war or suffering. Maybe the interest in alien life is unique to us because we are social in nature. We don't know other civilization's cultures. Maybe they know where we are but actively choose to ignore us. We can't even deal with or comprehend cultures a few hundred miles away from us. It makes no sense to try and preemptively comprehend the intent of the rest of the universe.
But for us as humans, our lives are usually maximally meaningful often to the point where it's egocentric and selfish. I am sure you can think of a few people who deserve to die rather than you. After all the selection of ostracized or hated people is very large. However, in the grand scheme of things you can only claim to look at local optima and we walk through history like a greedy algorithm.
Only when the full scale of events are known, when humanity's history becomes static either by ending or stagnating, we are truly able to make conclusions whether events in our time are good or bad. And even then it doesn't mean that it actually matters.