Writer's Fallout Shelter

When you come to the end of a short story something has been defined or revealed. In novels it happens also but it feels more literal, a person finds out their spouse is cheating, they discover Tara, or in other words, find their way home, ect. In a short story it can feel more insubstantial, airy, harder to define sometimes what is the "meaning" and at the same time if it is missing from the story everyone knows it. I wonder what that illusive 'thing' is. Is it an underpinning of a theme? Or character/choice tension? I wanted to know what others thought about what makes some short stories about something without it really being about anything sort of like Waiting for Godot or Seinfeld. Some people say you have to have tension, but you can have all the tension in the world and still not have a good story. Which brings me back to revealing, a 'truth' revealed. Belles