Richard Taylor's glow worm

Each dot of light identifies an ugly worm, whose luminous tail is meant to attract insects from the surrounding darkness. As from time to time one of these insects draws near it becomes entangled in a sticky thread lowered by the worm, and is eaten. These goes on month after month, the blind worm lying there in the barren stillness waiting to entrap an occasional bit of nourishment that will only sustain it to another bit of nourishment until... Until what? What great thing awaits all this long repetitious effort and makes it worthwhile? Really nothing. The larva just transforms itself finally into a tiny winged adult that lacks even mouth parts to feed and lives only a day or two. These adults, as soon as they have mated and laid eggs, are themselves caught in the threads and are devoured by the cannibalistic worms, often without having ventured into the day, the only point of their existence having now been fulfilled. This has been going on for millions of years, and to no other end other than that the same meaningless cycle may continue for another millions of years.

All the living things present essentially the same spectacle...One is led to wonder what the point of it all is, with what great triumph this ceaseless effort, repeating itself through millions of years, might finally culminate, and why it should go on and on and on for so long, accomplishing nothing, getting nowhere. But then one realizes that there is no point to it all, that it really culminates in nothing, that each of these cycles, so filled with toil, is to be followed only by more of the same. The point of any living thing's life is, evidently, nothing but life itself.