This saying is one of the most important questions that every intelligent person on earth must sooner or later face. I think every high school or college student should see "Hamlet" at least once along with "Romeo and Juliet".
The basic absurdity of living as a human on earth might bite into one in a very difficult way. But without this bite one cannot ever hope to aspire to logical rational pragmatic human thought and survival long term. Only by facing "To Be or Not Be" very personally does one ever actually become a full fledged adult. It is a "Trial by Fire" that all truly successful adults face sooner or later.
There are two basic responses to the complete absurdity of living in a human body on earth: one is to cry and one is to laugh. No one sane on earth takes anyone seriously who either just laughs or just cries because one like that is considered to be damaged or outright insane or dysfunctional. Sane functional adults travel between laughing and crying because both responses are necessary for ongoing living in a human body.
I often think that suicide terrorists have become so despondent that killing themselves and as many as possible is their response to just how absurd their lives really are. By the way this has absolutely nothing to do with Islam but simply an aberrant psychological response to stimuli. I think it culturally it has more to do with the ancient tribal history of the Middle East and how when nations used to conquer each other it was very common to kill every man, woman and child of the conquered lest one of them grow up and seek revenge. I think suicide terrorism is a cultural evolution of this kind of thinking and actually has nothing at all to do with any religion.
Strangely enough, in the world of enlightened people it is widely known that "One cannot attain enlightenment until one can laugh at one's own existence". I must admit this was one of the most difficult and terrible things for me to accomplish as well. The basic taking oneself so seriously in the world of secular Christianity in the United States when I was a child during the 1950s made laughing at my own existence almost impossible until I got into my twenties and considered suicide as the proper response to the basic absurdities of my life and all lives in general. But having reached a point where I could actually laugh at my own existence I found I could then embrace God and the universe completely and then experience personally the whole universe as myself and I found that this actually is the key to complete enlightenment that begins to take everyone around you into enlightenment and bliss. So you understand the basic dynamics it works like this:
First you get to the point where your life and every life is completely absurd. Then you think "I'm going to end my life because this is just too ridiculous and meaningless." Then you bottom out and think, "I can't take my own life because of what it would do to my family and friends. One of them might follow me into my suicide and I could never live with that outcome." So you stay alive for your family and friends just like I did. It does not take away the basic desire to not exist anymore. It just is the only honorable thing that you can do. However, then you become more and more interested in how you can reduce the suffering of others. Then you find the amazing joy in making other people happy. And finally you find yourself becoming happy beyond your wildest dreams in making others happy you start to find what is important to your happiness too. You begin to have compassion for yourself and allow yourself to have what YOU want. And so having learned to make everyone around you happy and having learned to make yourself happy you move closer and closer to permanent states of bliss and bring all with you in various ways into these temporary or permanent states of Bliss!
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