life is much like a movie we walk into well after its opening scene, and we will have to step out long before most of the story lines reach their conclusions. We are acutely aware that we need to know a great deal if we are to understand the few confusing minutes that we do watch. Of course, we don’t know exactly what it is that we don’t know, so we can’t frame the question well. We ask, “What is the meaning of life?” not expecting a direct answer (such as “forty-two”), but rather hoping for some enlightenment, something to give us an “aha!” experience in which, suddenly, things that we had
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