He had grown up to yearn to search; there was always meaning to be found.  He often felt himself wishing for an experience which meant nothing at all.  It didn't happen for him till, for a week, drunk in the middle of nights, he realized that nothing invariably came to mean something, and most certainly the closer you think you were getting to it.

♦

He felt that if during a period he found that nothing in life was meaning much to him, it must mean that he was at the time incapable of thinking about much more than himself.