seeker,
You should have translated "empty and meaningless" into something more practical.
If I am correct, it practically means "Stop looking, there is nothing to find, just accept it". Is that accurate?
I saw part of a movie in which a young monk couldn't take it that his girl left him. The sage replied to him "Can't you accept it?" and the teenager screamed "No!". The sage discovers that he had killed both his ex girlfriend and the guy she was with. Earlier in the movie he had said "Desire leads to attachment, attachment leads even to murder."
This "looking" that people constantly feel, it is the major sign of the delusion of self-attachment. Feeling empty of something, unaware of the fact that they are empty of a self, and no one can't know what someone wants.
When you tell people it is empty and meaningless, remind them that means to "stop looking".
What I mean is the nature of your Soliliquoy.
The stream of consciousness keeps rolling thru' with all it's opinion, prejudice, aversion and preference but there's no 'sting' in it.
It's not 'believed in.
That conditioning appears hollow and quite silly and prevents the spirit of presence.
And when chatting with another,
the story they are telling or picture being presented by them,
the flaws in logic and reason stand out like beacons.
the beliefs are monstrous and the suffering is plain to 'see', how the person is fumbling their way down blind alleys because the person has a belief there is this 'Storybook Self"
that needs protecting and comforting.
Most conversations are immersed in a 'what's in it for me' paradigm by all parties.
Once the belief in an intrinsic self is no longer at the centre,
one doesn't 'need' anything.
A conversation then becomes the possibility for an act of generosity into which 'listening' happens.
To assign 'meaning' is to believe there is something at stake.
The absence of meaning is nothing at stake.
The old saying 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' stands out in quite a new and unexpected way.
Some people are incredibly delightful when you are looking from a point of view that's absent of agenda.
Does that make sense?
In the ballpark?