Your article is great for beginning a conversation, and the conversation that I would like to start is inspired by your nihilistic conclusion.
I do not agree with the statement that
There is no meaning to anything other than the one we decide to apply.
We are free to arrive at meaning through various methods, but that does not follow on to apply that there is no meaning at all. As someone sometime back said, "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."
Just as the shape of a drop of water at the end of a faucet is intrinsically determined by the a collage of physical properties (such as the volume of water, the temperature of the water, the ambient temperature of the environment, the structure of the water molecules, the atomic structure of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that constitute the molecules and so on), I subscribe to the view that meaning too is an emergent property. The variables in this case depend on the context of the thought in question, its relevance, the influence it has over your action, your ability to comprehend it and so on and so on.
So for example, if you are very thirsty, and someone brings you a glass of water, then there will be a sense of gratitude or relief that you experience, given the context that you want the water. If you are fasting for some religious purpose and are not permitted to drink the water, then you might be suspicious of someone bringing you a glass of water despite you being thirsty. If you are being tortured and are dying for a drink, and someone brings you a glass of water... you get the idea. In each of these scenarios, meaning appears at the boundary of the context and the phenomena that are unfolding.
When you exponentiate this to include every aspect of life, naturally grandiose ideas and metaphors begin to emerge out of such introspections. What the philosophisers have done is that they have convinced you, because of their lack of introspective zeal, that there really is no meaning at all - and the opportunist takes that as a backdoor to channel all forms of mutations of reason and logic in order to maintain the hubris in which they can strive.
As for the quote embedded in your post:
The Optimist was arguing that a human being can survive drinking a glassful of tap water in Flint, Michigan. A pessimist was arguing that a human certainly won't. The realist was looking up Wikipedia to determine the cocktail of toxic materials that could be present in the glass. The opportunist comes in and now we have a lab rat.
Anyone who is trying to sell you their own narrative is testing the spectrum upon which you belong or they try to reassure themselves about their own mission in life.
I totally agree with this. As we have not definitively established the meaning of life, the universe and everything else, anyone trying to sell you their narrative is indeed testing a spectrum, such as yours truly. However, with testing, and repeated verified results, we can begin to develop a comprehensive system of cataloguing all ideas and thoughts and thus collectively move on to a higher state of existence.
again. I said. you can apply your own meaning. I was pretty clear.
and every human builds their own based on the sheer amount of possibilities that entropy supplies.