What does it mean that meaning is constructed not found?

There is no pre-existing meaning waiting to be discovered — you build it.

Example: Two siblings attend the same funeral for the same grandmother. One leaves devastated, interpreting the death as proof that everything he loves will be taken away — a confirmation of a worldview organized around loss. The other leaves with a quiet, aching gratitude, interpreting the same death as a reminder that love is finite and therefore infinitely precious — a confirmation of a worldview organized around appreciation. Same event. Same grandmother. Same grief. Completely different meanings. Neither sibling discovered the meaning of the death the way you discover a fossil embedded in rock. Each one constructed a meaning from the raw material of the experience, using a framework they had been building — mostly unconsciously — for decades. The meaning was not in the event. It was in the meaning-maker.

Try this: Choose a significant event from the past year — a career change, a relationship shift, a failure, a success, an unexpected disruption. Write the event in a single factual sentence, stripped of all interpretation. Then write three different meanings that could be constructed from this event. The first should be the meaning you have been carrying — your default interpretation. The second should be a meaning that someone you respect might construct from the same facts. The third should be a meaning that directly contradicts your default. Do not evaluate which is correct. All three are constructions. Sit with the discomfort of holding three valid interpretations of the same event simultaneously. That discomfort is the felt experience of recognizing yourself as a meaning-maker rather than a meaning-finder.