Meaning Makers

Right on cue, the wisps hiding in the garden coyly emerged and spiralled into the dimming light. They caught in the edges of her sight and stirred her to her feet. It is time it is time it is time the air whispered. 

"Hello, little one," she smiled fondly down at the feline lazing on the rug. "It is time for tea.

What shall we have today?"

Her spotted hands wrapped themselves around a mug, pressed the worn-down lever on the kettle, and pulled a tea bag from the box on the shelf. A familiar, unnamed tune hummed through her lips.

The wisps in the garden loved the heat rising from the mug she held. As she settled into the wooden deck chair they chattered around her, weaving patterns in the steam, nudging her hair and wrapping around her frame. Bubbles began to form from the bottom of her cup, and she laughed as they broke free and spun cheekily around her head.

~~~

I believe we are all meaning-makers.

A few years ago, I was home and my mum called me urgently outside. I ran out quickly to find her standing under our almond blossom tree staring up in wonder. "Come here, come here" she said. "Look at the way the sky peeks through the pink blossoms." We stood for 10 minutes looking at swaying clouds of pink almond blossoms against a brilliant blue, New Zealand summer sky. Last time I was home again, on listless days that stretched on she would look at the clock and say, "It's 6pm. Time for a martini. Let's make it special," and concoct some brightly-colored drink with a glint in her eyes.

We build our own rituals in our lives. Rituals, symbols, small moments of wonder – we have the power to create them, and imbue them with meaning. Humans are astounding because of our capability to imagine; to conjure abstract thought not represented physically in front of us. We hold the entire universe in our minds (we can snap our fingers and explode our mind to the edges of the expanding universe; and then snap again and zoom into the minute structure of atoms. With these incredibly powerful minds, we interpret the world around us. We build structures into our lives that give us purpose and joy. We can shape our entire reality by changing the patterns of interpretation, and by designing the narratives that perception is filtered through.

My conscious experience is shaped by the contours of narratives that I use to interpret the world. There are many narratives, and they are constantly shifting as I rebuild them. These are some of them.

Humans are a miracle of anti-entropy. The universe is a river flowing towards chaos, but we, life out of nowhere, are stones that create eddies of order, harmony, and synchronicity. There is basic goodness in the world, and it is in the nowness of our experience (the moment when we breath out before we breath in again when there is nothing but expansive stillness). We can never be truly alone because all of us are part of the same fundamental substance: joy is in the dissolution of conceptions and barriers that stand between us.

I am on a quest to build my narratives and to create meaning in every moment.