Well said Jack. The only disagreement I have with anything you say here is that "and the goings-on of quarks and distant galaxies is not personally meaningful to me (does not personally impact me)," is incorrect, imho. I believe that literally everything in the material universe is connected to and affects everything else in said universe. Those quarks are composed of smaller 'particles' that are composed of smaller 'particles' that are too short-lived to be 'particles' in and of themselves. Those smallest 'particles' simply flash into being and then are gone again. I think I'm getting away from the point I want to make...

Every part of the universe affects every other part of the universe. The effect weakens with distance, but the 'wave/effect' created by each particle, each quark, created never dies out completely and, in a small way at least, affects us all on the personal level.