. "he says really meaningful-sounding stuff, & then people think their lives are meaningful. But … things actually have to mean a specific other thing. They can’t just mean meaning. `Mean' is a transitive verb. It needs some direct object."
Conversation
Oddly, I suspect that in practice this just isn't true. In practice, having "meaning" is feeling good about your overall life, & your relation to others & the world. Trying to pick one main thing that your life "means" can get in the way of that.
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In practice, having "general meaning" feels a lot like "the sensation of playing the part in an interesting story", I think, which relies a lot on the sense of expectation and what your experience means "about" the rest of your story.