Unless you give meaning to your life, it does not have any. There is no point in asking "What is the Meaning of Life?", because life does not have any meaning, unless you give it meaning. Similarly, only you can tell what the meaning of suffering is, and specifically of your suffering. It is even doubtful if we can say much meaningful about other people's suffering other than generalities about their need to learn from their karma.
But, we can tell almost instantly what our suffering means to us. That is, if we are willing to listen carefully to our spirit and its reaction to the event. To do this we must immediately still our mind, stop its complaining, and ask ourselves "What am I learning here?", What is this event trying to tell me?" "What would be the appropriate action, to the benefit of all concerned?"
How do we do that? Again, meditation is the means we use to stop the mind and to get the spirit in action. This does not mean that we have to 'get off the road', 'enter a temple', and sit for hours in 'Zazen position' to get an answer. When well trained in meditation, we can get the answer instantaneously. That is when you can discover which of your drives and desires are just old programs and which are coming out of your true self. You can indeed find out who you really are.
Let's take a side trip to Meditation.
What I consider the meaning of my life, undoubtedly, differs from what you will consider the meaning of your life. Yet, I have found that those, who listen to their own spirit, put more energy into spiritual actualization and develop to more universal type of beings with a broad view on life, striving for harmony among people and the universe. Somehow, there is more commonality between inner spirits than we expect. May be their is a common spirit. Who knows?