The idea that I can determine the meaning of my own life is an illusion

"Nor can it be a question of creation ex nihilo. Human beings are self-determining – but only on the basis of a deeper dependency upon Nature, the world, and each other. And whatever meaning I may forge for my own life is constrained from the inside by this dependency. We cannot start from scratch. It is not a matter of clearing away [externally]-given meanings in order to hammer out our own, as Nietzsche seemed to imagine. For we are already plunged deep in the midst of meaning, wherever it is we happen to find ourselves. We are woven through by the meanings of others – meanings which we never got to choose, yet which provide the matrix within which we come to make sense of ourselves and the world. In this sense, if not in every sense, the idea that I can determine the meaning of my own life is an illusion."