I’m glad to hear your life’s improving, but I think it’s a bit much to speak of the universe mirroring us or giving us “what we are.” It’s society we have to fit into to be happy, not the universe at large, and society operates largely on delusions.

As Ernest Becker explains (based on the work of Otto Rank), culture consists of immortality projects and we protect our fragile self-esteem when we’re able to participate successfully in those projects. But both the projects and our self-esteem are arbitrary constructs in light of the existential, universal, natural facts we’re thereby running away from.

Teen angst and the traumas of our “terrible twos” are natural reactions we have to harsh realities. That’s when we learn for the first time that we’re on our own, that our parents aren’t gods who will care for us forever, that the real world doesn’t care whether we succeed or fail and is indifferent to our whims but also to our dreams and ideals.

Those are some of the existential facts that comprise the universe at large, and we “fit into” that larger, inhuman world not with Americanized self-esteem but with more mystical and ascetic (less individualistic or ego-centered) reactions such as awe, angst, or horror.

Just my two cents, mind you.