What's eventually only really important, and what gives the motivation to persevere?
In Stoicism the meaning of life is living according with Nature and achieving eudaimonia (often translated as happiness or flourishing):
This is why Zeno was the first (in his treatise On the Nature of Man) to designate as the end "life in agreement with nature" (or living agreeably to nature), which is the same as a virtuous life, virtue being the goal towards which nature guides us. So too Cleanthes in his treatise On Pleasure, as also Posidonius, and Hecato in his work On Ends. Again, living virtuously is equivalent to living in accordance with experience of the actual course of nature, as Chrysippus says in the first book of his De finibus; for our individual natures are parts of the nature of the whole universe. 88. And this is why the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe, a life in which we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common to all things, that is to say, the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is. And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the spirit dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders the universe. Diogenes then expressly declares the end to be to act with good reason in the selection of what is natural. Archedemus says the end is to live in the performance of all befitting actions.
Okay nice. The funny thing is I LOVE nature and everything that got to do with it. Only to make a living I make content I've to edit on my computer. Those things are sometimes contradictory like when you owe a business and don't like to pay taxes but you got too.
Coincidentally, what "nature" means in Stoicism also has its own wiki page, explaining how its different from our modern english understanding.
Here’s one to ponder: If you don’t like paying taxes, for example, then you’re not living in accord with nature.
“Sometimes it’s useful to substitute reality for nature when we’re reading Stoic texts.”
— Dr. Gregory Sadler, Enchiridion 1
“Living in accord with nature means chiefly two things for Epictetus: first, accepting all that happens, because everything has come from God, who is the same as nature; second, keeping one’s will in its natural state of freedom—attentive not to the external world but to things that are up to us.”
— Robin Waterfield, Epictetus The Complete Works
“Since there is no room for chance within this rationally ordered system, the Stoics’ metaphysical determinism further dictated that this cosmic Nature is identical to fate. Thus at this level, “living in agreement with nature” means conforming one’s will with the sequence of events that are fated to occur in the rationally constituted universe, as providentially willed by Zeus.”
— William O. Stephens, Creighton University
https://iep.utm.edu/stoiceth/