@Pythagorean,
Pythagorean, those are the 10 questions I carried in my heart and mind for over 40 years. To answer those questions for myself, I studied every form of knowledge I could get my hands on. I studied this knowledge with a completely open mind.
The only way to have any chance of answering these questions for ones self, is to study all there is to study. It is easy to answer those questions with the dogma of one Idealism or another. But to answer the questions, with a mind filled with the many different forms of knowledge, is the only way to go.
It is such a great gift and feeling, to see reality with a mind filled with a huge multitude of individualized knowledge.