Meaning isn’t hiding somewhere waiting to be found. It’s a thing you build out of what you already have.

Searching is the wrong verb, and it keeps people stuck for years. Treating meaning as a hidden object turns your life into a hunt where every ordinary week counts as another failure to find it. What actually happens is duller and more encouraging: you pick something, put real effort into it over a long stretch, and the significance grows into the effort instead of arriving first.

Stop waiting for certainty to turn up before you start. Choose something plausible, commit to three months of it, and look at what has grown by then.