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My preoccupation with writing about meaning, love, and happiness derives from my desire to understand these parts of life more deeply, and impart to others whatever understanding I can glean. I will confess that this can be a frustrating task at times because I feel as though I can never get to the essence of these sublimities; words always feel inadequate. For a long time, I believed that at some point—maybe after writing a million more words—I would finally arrive at the ability to adequately express what it is that I’m seeking.

The philosopher Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, who died in 1951, probably would have told me I was barking up the wrong tree. The writer and fellow philoso

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