Hey Maarten, thanks for engaging!

I think it’s more likely my argument wasn’t coherent than you missing anything. This was less a well-reasoned, airtight argument, and more a word-vomit of ideas that I’d been wrestling with for a bit. If anything, putting them out in writing made it more clear that sense is yet to be made from them.

That being said, your point makes me think. Yes, when there’s the discrepancy between who we feel ourselves to be and who we are outwardly perceived as, there’s an unpleasant friction, the Borges “that’s not me!” feeling, and we don’t like that.

But I’m not sure that the absence of this discrepancy would leave us with a problem no matter what. Yes, if there’s no discrepancy, we’re still (likely) objectively insignificant. But objective insignificance needn’t imply feelings of insignificance, or anxiety, if that makes sense. It can just be another fact of human life, like the texture of trees, or the color blue. Just another part of the backdrop against which our lives transpire. Maybe it becomes a problem when we feel our subjectivity not accurately represented in our objective selves. This assumes that insignificance is a matter of misrepresentation, and I have no idea what to make of that. I’m sure we can still feel insignificant if other people see us as clearly as we see ourselves, though then maybe the issue is that we don’t see ourselves clearly enough, and so people end up seeing only the same shallow view of ourselves that we do (that strikes me as possible).

I like your point that meaning is to be both found and made, I agree it’s likely a multifaceted process, not just the making secularists claim, and not just the finding spiritualists claim.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks again for responding