Tolstoy's declaration arrives not as moral instruction but as a confession—he's describing what he *discovered* after nearly destroying himself with nihilism, not what he believed all along. The radicalism lies in his refusal to soften the language: not "a meaning" or "the highest meaning," but *the sole* meaning, which strips away our comfortable fictions about personal achievement, artistic legacy, or spiritual enlightenment as ends in themselves. A surgeon who spends decades perfecting her technique but never treats the poor, or a novelist who writes masterpieces while ignoring suffering around her, must reckon with this standard. Tolstoy forces us to ask not whether we've done good work, but whether our work has genuinely served anyone beyond ourselves.