Is life meaningless without service to others or do you lean towards a more objectivist ideology which states that to serve others is an insult both to them and to oneself?

My supervisor and I were stuck in traffic for hours today discussing various religions and where it all leads and what the point of it all is for people and, technically speaking, her the methodist turned catholic and me the witch turned atheist have the exact same goal in life and that is to serve others and to learn about ourselves by connecting to all in the universe…and that’s how we find our meaning though we came to that from different paths…but then I remember some of my long lost college friends who were obsessed with objectivist ideology and all that Atlas Shrugged brought forth into the world…and they were so happy to find a philosophy that would allow them to claim personal genius and selfishness without helping others in need…and I read all of Rand’s books and thankfully I eventually got past the mind-numbing redundancy and got that the gist was that it’s simply pathetic to help another man out via social systems (forget that Rand was uber bitter about the communist ways of her youth)....or do you consider it a good medium to be both altruistic and selfish depending on the situation…

imo, life IS meaningless without service to others…not that one can not find meaning and value in one’s own talent + intelligence, but that these in it of themselves are not the best contributions to the world…