Meaning Making Machines

You Brain is Constantly Creating Meaning

You are a meaning-making machine. For as far back as you can remember, you have been analyzing every experience in your life and attempting to draw some meaning from it. From the smallest experience (like brief eye contact with a stranger across the room) to the most outstanding event (like breaking your leg on a skiing trip), you have been creating connections and applying meaning to these situations in order to make better sense of the world around you. 

Maybe you recently went out for a walk, waved at a friend as you passed by, and received no wave in return. A very simple action and a very short period of time, but this simple experience may have your brain racing a million miles a minute with thoughts like, “Is she mad at me? She must have just not seen me. But how could she not have seen me, I was right in front of her face? She must be purposely ignoring me! Well, I’ll show her! We’ll see who gets an invitation to my birthday party next weekend…” and so on and so on until you let this simple encounter actually affect your day, your mood, and your relationship with this person. This is when you need to take a step back and make a distinction between what happened and your interpretation of what happened. We run into problems in our lives when these two ideas become blurred. Instead of taking a step back and seeing what really happened (You saw a friend. You waved. She did not wave.), you start to recall the event by including your interpretation of what happened (You saw a friend. You waved. She ignored you and purposely didn’t wave back.). It is easy to see how the second version of the story has the potential to create serious problems for you.

While our minds will constantly attempt to figure everything out and create meaning out of otherwise meaningless situations, the first step towards peace of mind is making this distinction. Next time you find yourself retelling a story to a friend, try to tell them exactly what happened with no flowery language, no subjective information, no opinions. It may not be a very exciting story for your friend to listen to, but it will be an excellent exercise in determining exactly how much control you have over your life and your thoughts. Once you know that you are able to make this distinction and separate the facts from the opinions, you can add all the flowery language and subjective views you want. The difference is that you will now be aware just how much you are able to reinterpret at your own will. This is freedom, this is power over your own life, this is the inability to play the victim no matter what life throws at you. Maybe your friend got dirt in her contact lens and couldn’t see more than two feet in front of her that day. Maybe she hurt her arm and couldn’t lift it to wave. Maybe she just plain didn’t see you. Any of these interpretations are just as valid as your original one and would cause you much less unnecessary grief in the end. 

Create your own Meaning

The next time you find your thoughts running wild about a certain event or experience you had, try to replay the event back in your head, relaying only the facts. Leave out even the most valid interpretation and break the experience down into its simplest form. Nothing in this world means anything until a human being decides that it does. This is true of everything from our experiences with other people to the concepts of time, space, language, mathematics. Anything you can think of! Without human beings acting as meaning-making machines, these are just events, experiences, things that happen. Slow down your thoughts and take a long hard look at what is really bothering you: what happened or your interpretation of what happened. What you’ll find is that your interpretation is almost always the cause for your grief. Once you can accept this, you will see that your life is empty and meaningless and it’s empty and meaningless that it’s empty and meaningless. Start from a blank slate, nothing is that serious. When you can begin reinterpreting what used to be negative experiences, you are on the path to peace.    

(Thoughts expressed in this post were built upon my own experience with Landmark Education and many of the distinctions made throughout the post are derived directly from the language of Landmark Education.)