APPLIED MEANING

I spent much of my life looking for meaning in a world that made no sense.

Like most children I was intensely curious. I had a million questions about almost everything. I frequently unnerved my parents, teachers, and adult leaders with a relentless series of concentric questions.

“Why?”

What I got in response to that question was never really fulfilling. Each answer opened inside of me a myriad of more questions. Some adults were more patient than others. In retrospect I think I averaged three follow up questions before the inquiry was halted or at least redirected. I did have a knack for wearing them down. And quickly.

As children we are programmed and indoctrinated into a cultural and familial belief system. We are taught what things are and what they mean. This happens primarily through the teaching of language. As we are taught words, we are taught meaning. It is all relative, yet it is presented as if it were absolute. The fact that belief systems and cultural norms vary widely around the globe seems to not deter humans from thinking that their own meanings are the correct ones. Wars are waged in defense of what we think things mean. We will die rather than question.

It was the belief systems and objective explanations that never made sense to me. They didn’t feel right. I could not accept that the meanings I was being provided with were what things meant. I am speaking at a deep level. I wanted a true meaning that would resonate in my heart and body. I did not believe what I was being told. And I could not believe that the people telling me what things meant believed them either. It baffled me.

And it still often does.

Thus, my search for meaning that feels right for me remains a central focus within my consciousness. Meaning that makes sense at an intuitive level. Meaning that feels aligned and harmonic with Truth.

I know I am not alone in this quest.

I hear people frequently say that while they believe that life has meaning they are not certain what that meaning is. They place meaning outside and apart from themselves.

I have become convinced that life indeed has meaning. It is the meaning that we ourselves supply.

We are born story tellers and meaning makers. That is then solidified as we learn language and beliefs from our authority figures. While everyone has an innate sense that life has meaning very few question the meanings that we are handed by our families and cultures.

I never believed the meanings that were handed to me. I questioned everything. I did so until I heard an exasperated “because I said so.”

That temporarily shut me up but it never shut me down.

And, at this late inning in my game of life, it still doesn’t.

The quality of my life experiences is largely based on what I personally make things mean.

Read that again.

Question it. Chew on it. Disagree with it. Challenge it.

And consider that it may be true.

We are free to make things mean whatever we choose every moment of every day. We are free to frame. We are free to reframe. To question and to alter our meanings.

It is what it is because we say it is.

If you are feeling discomfort or frustration contemplate not solely attributing it to outer conditions. Look at what you are making the condition mean. Look at the story you are telling about the circumstance. Feel into your narrative.

And shift your meaning.

Apply a different meaning and feel the energy shift.

We are always moving energy. Always. We do that largely via storytelling and meaning making. Evolve the meaning and free energy. Reapply a truer meaning and feel the uplift in your energy system.

Take it from this lifelong meaning seeker: we are the meaning makers of our own experience. Apply a higher level meaning and feel the change.

And no one else must agree. Not one other person. We are making up our personal reality. But only always.

Question your meanings. Especially if they are mean.

Apply a better meaning and feel your life expand.

AND YET

I am living in what I am calling the “land of AND YET.

There is nothing that I need.

There is nothing that I really want.

I have no goals. Nothing that I really want to achieve.

AND YET.

I am of an age. I do not consider myself old, though I tease about it. I certainly am no longer young.

AND YET.

There is nothing broken that I feel a need to fix. I really have no problems per se. I do not worry. I experience little fear and no anxiety. I would not say I have a charmed life. I am frequently charmed by life, however.

AND YET.

The man of my dreams is no longer alive. And so, I am a widower once again. I am alone though rarely lonely. I have a couple friends who have full lives in addition to their relationship with me. I celebrate that. I celebrate them. I celebrate the time we do get to share.

AND YET.

I am surprised that with all the contentment that I just laid out there is a very slight and subtle dissonance in my daily experience of me. There is an unresolved chord though I sense nothing in need of resolution. I feel a soft murkiness just below the surface. Murky, yet not dark. It is just barely moving. Not yet discomfort. The easiest of unease.

I never expected to be where I am. With this set of circumstances. With all this open, peaceful spaciousness. Yet open and spacious because loss has left its emptiness. Yesterday is radically gone. In today there is potential, yet that possibility is hazy and unclear.

AND YET.

I am literally smiling as I seek to put my internal experiences into words that may somehow land in another’s heart. A heart that might feel a tinge of resonance. Familiarity. A me too of now or maybe someday.

AND YET.

Being so blind slighted by yesterday has not shut me down. It has not walled me in. I am not braced against the future the way the bruised so often are. I am open. I do not miss the miraculous quality of finding myself open when it was openness that left parts of me in tatters.

AND YET.

With every comfort handled and with an untroubled mind and unshielded heart I sincerely have no idea what is next. That hint of dissonance is the awareness that I am not finished yet, though I haven’t a clue what is left to fulfill. What is still undone. What is yet an unformed goal. It is not disturbing yet it is calling for attention. It is a beginning ripple in a mostly quiet sea. A mostly quiet sea of me.

AND YET.

And so, I watch and I wait and I listen and I trust. I make no demand on the places of not yet. In the spaces of AND YET. I do not push on the tenderness of what is yet to be.

I am grateful to have the capacity to hold contentment with what is and the movement of what may be seeking to be. I have little if any push or force left. I have learned and honor the futility of that. I have a whole lot of” let.” It serves me well.

I am still alive which is direct evidence I am not yet done. AND YET I am not clear what may be next. I hold that unknown in peace. Or better yet I and my unknown are held in peace. I choose that peace. I court that. I allow that.

I reside with grief in a grateful state of being. I am not naive enough to think that I cannot be knocked down again. It has happened so many times. In so many ways.

AND YET.

I know that when it happens, I have the power within me to get back up and keep moving on. I have nothing left to lose in a very real way. It is directly connected to my contentment. To my trust. To my abiding faith that I can handle any yet.

And so, I am dwelling in what I call the “land of AND YET.” It could as easily be called the “land of BOTH AND.” The real estate is pricy, yet the views are beautiful. Clear. Uncluttered. Unobstructed. And they are earned. Paid in earnest. Every fall met with a rise. A choice to rise. A prayer to rise.

A daily prayer of AND YET.