The empty life is not defined so much by the things one does as by the relationship one holds toward unimportant things. One can do nothing and live fully, but a delight rather than contempt for trivialities - this is what makes a life empty. It is as if, since birth, it had second guessed itself; as if, even before it could crawl, it had developed a taste for the irony of things, long before anyone held it over the water to laugh at its reflection.