The Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life?
Here's my theory......the meaning of life is to learn stuff!
See, in the beginning, before there was an physical universe, there was a race of beings that had no physical presence at all, they were simply consciousnesses. Perhaps they had evolved from a previously imploded universe. Having no physical environment there was only so much they could do and learn and so each being then created their own universe....enter the big bang and parallel universes.
Once our universe began to take shape the formation of living organisms is simply a natural one.
The non-physical being then divided itself up to inhabit each and every living being from single celled organisms to plants, animals and us. This is what people refer to as a soul...I don't like this term simply because of the religious connotations but it's serves the purpose.
Now...because the whole point of the exercise was to learn, the "soul" then learns and absorbs experiences from it's time in that living organism. Once the organism dies the "soul" then collates and remembers that information, considers if there are more lessons to be learned and if so moves onto another life. After each lifetime the "soul" remembers all that has been learned in all previous lifetimes, hence the phrase " an old soul".
"Souls" also stay together in "Soul" families so the soul of your brother might be your father in the next life or perhaps a best friend, hence the term "soul mates".
Now, because the purpose of the "soul" is to learn it preordains to a certain extent the events that will hapen in that person's life. So for example, if that "soul's" purpose is to experince emense joy then that person would have a very happy life, where as if that "soul's" purpose is to experience extreme poverty then that is the life it will choose.
To take that a step further, if that "soul's" purpose is to experience immense pain then perhaps it will choose a life where it looses a child in traggic circumstance or that "soul's" purpose my be to experience killing someone or to be killed etc.
This explains why you often see families that always seem to be struck with the most traggic of circumstances...perhaps one person dies young of cancer, another might die in a car accident etc etc and yet you find others where no-one in the family every experiences any major illnesses and everyone just lives on to an old age.
Evenually the "soul" comes to a point where it has learnt all it feels it needs to and it is at that point the it "ascends" to remain in a non-physical form.
And so, although this explanation is brief and generalised it's the one that seems to make most sense to me after years of reading and querying and deep thought on the subject.
Whilst I don't conform to any religion I don't doubt that some of this might relate to some religions, I know I have discussed this with a couple of Muslim friends who have said there is some similarity.
Anyways...feel free to comment.