A meaningful life does not have to look impressive from across the street.

Lives are judged from the outside on a handful of legible signals, and most of what makes a life good does not produce any. Care, attention, work done well, relationships that hold, none of that shows from across the street. Legibility and value are simply different properties.

Ask whether you are arranging your life for how it reads or for how it is. Where those come apart, notice which one you have been serving. The distance between them is often larger than expected.