I am an 18 year old student attending a secular community college in Los Angeles, CA. Most college students my age who have some level of intellectuality, have what's called an "existential crisis", in which they contemplate existence, purpose, reality, morality, futility, destiny, politics, etc.
However, I've been experiencing my existential crisis for about two and a half years. I have been well aware of nihilism for some time, and as depressing as it is, I feel much of it makes sense. Sometimes I feel that the only thing that sets humans apart from animals is that, all man-made aesthetics aside (technology, politics, etc.) we are the only multicellular organisms that are also sentient beings (as far as we're aware of). Sure it's a significant difference, but when comparing grand-scheme of our physiological makeup to a bonobo (which has a 98% similarity to the genetic makeup of homo sapiens), it's such a small thing... we're just intellectually-advanced animals whose only purpose is to procreate. That's so depressing.
I find theistic existentialism to be ideal. It's the thought that God has planned the world to be the way it is today, and He has laid out a scenario for me to work with; however, I have complete and total control over my own life and I am responsible for anything and everything that happens to me and involves me. I find it to be an independent and significantly more optimistic outlook on life, but it's not always that easy to sustain such positivity.
To put it bluntly, I need proof that I am (and that you are) more than just a super-intellectual animal. Not that I have a purpose, but that my life is worth something. That my lonely physical existence on this planet won't be forgotten in 100 years amongst the other 6,709,891,133 people on this planet as of 7/14/08 at 6:20pm GMT. That I'm not just an insignificant speck in the grand-scheme of life, just 1/1,000,000 of an atom of a molecule of a dust particle that just brushed past the continuing train moving a BILLION miles an hour, that is everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in God's creation. I need to know that I am more than almost nothing.