My answer is to live your life for God and do what makes him happy. But I'm going to make a guess that you're not in my boat. So I'll make a different answer for you, which I also live by.
You are here to love as much as you can. Love your friends, love them to death. Love your family even though they will probably betray you and hurt you.
Love your enemies because it's fun to watch them drown in their own hate and reach out to grab at nothing but love. Live for others. It's a mainly Buddhist principle that I love, because it's true.
You live life for yourself, you end up alone and still miserable... unsatisfied. You live to serve and you get that feeling, you know that feeling you get when you bring a smile to someone's face or you give someone a really good Christmas present you put a ton of thought into. TL;DR Live for others and love others with all your heart.
Who knows... The fact that your asking the internet makes me worry.. But, I personally think it it to form our own meanings as we age, for all the right reasons or wrong, and in that, act on good, (or try at least), and what ever we gain or lose, if we succeed in our ultimate goal or fail; take away what we have learned, spread what we have learned, and stay true to that... **** just be a decent human.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.