I've been rereading Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl's inspiring story of how he used conscious meaning making to survive through his grueling experience at Auschwitz. Frankl says, "We are never left with nothing when we realize we always have the freedom to choose how to respond to the situation." Of course how we respond to a situation is based upon the meanings we make of it.
Achieving and maintaining a zesty approach to life includes being able to distance from our experiences enough to notice what interpretations or meanings we apply to things, people, and events. When we can detach from our experience and observe, we can see whether we are assigning a meaning that is supportive to us or one that is unsupportive. And we can change the meaning if we realize our meaning is unsupportive.
I'm going to tell two stories about meaning making. The first story shows the heartbreaking consequences of being unaware of the interpretations we make of events. The second story shows a life change when a boy made a new meaning of a past traumatic event. At the end of the post I offer some experiential exercises to help build your meaning making observation power.
Celebration Aborted: A cautionary tale about making unsupportive interpretations
A well-known story told by Thich Nhat Hanh shows a tragic consequence of assigning a disadvantageous meaning. In the story, a Husband had to leave his pregnant Wife to go to war. Two years later, he came back, and the Wife hurried out to get some food to make a special meal. While she was gone, he tried to get his Son to call him daddy. But because his Son had never known him before, the boy refused to call him daddy. He said, "Mister, you're not my daddy. My daddy talks to my mommy at night, and my mommy cries to him. And when she sits down, he sits down. And when she lies down, he lies down too."
The Husband's heart hardened as he listened to the story. He was so distressed that he started going out drinking every night and staying out to the wee hours of the morning. The Wife became so distressed that she threw herself in the river and drowned. When the man heard about his wife's drowning, he went home to take of the boy.
The first night he was home, he was going to read the boy a good night story. He put a light by the side of the bed. All of a sudden the little boy jumped up and down. "Mister, Mister, Mister!" he squealed, pointing to a shadow of the Husband on the wall. "That's my Daddy! My mother would talk to him at night, and when she sat down, he would sit down too. When she lay down, he would lay down too."
Contrary to what her Husband thought, the Wife had been crying in her imagination to her Husband, "Please come home. I can't stand missing you so much." The Husband believed that his interpretation was a fact. Had he been better able to see that he was assigning to the boy's story the meaning that she was unfaithful, he could have asked her to give him the truth. Then he might have been celebrating his homecoming instead of a coping with horror.
Celebration Found: A corrective tale about changing unsupportive interpretations
The second story, a dramatic and beautiful real life story I heard yesterday. It's about how changing the meaning of a life event can change an experience, and even a whole life.
A thirteen year old boy asked for help from a psycho-spiritual practitioner. The boy had been terrified and trembling every day for the past two years. His quivering fear state had started when his father had gotten something lodged in his throat and couldn't breathe. The boy had managed to dislodge the item and, within moments, the father was fine. The incident left the boy, however, with the belief (interpretation, meaning) that his parents were going to die. This led to his accompanying constant terror and trembling.
The practitioner talked the boy back to the moment in the episode when it was clear that the father was okay. The practitioner coached the boy to realize and focus on the fact that his father was alive. And that it was because of him! As the boy refocused on these new meanings he moved to a state of celebration and gratitude. His two years of anguish and trembling vanished. His zest returned--and it has stayed.
Clearly, recognizing and changing our automatically assigned meanings is in order if the interpretations do not add to our zestiness. The exercises below help develop the ability to recognize our meaning making process.
Exercises to build recognition of our unconscious automatic meaning making
The first step, as usual, is to become aware that you are assigning meanings. These three exercises can help you increase your power through observation of your interpretations.
In each of the following meaning making experiments, read the bolded sentence. Then look slowly around and apply the idea in the sentence to what you see. Apply it to anything your eyes have lighted upon. Just glance easily and fairly quickly around, selecting objects indiscriminately. For best results, make notes about your discoveries.
1. Nothing I see [in this room, on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything in itself.
"This table does not mean anything." "This chair does not mean anything." Continue naming objects, first near and then further away, adding: "does not mean anything in itself." Make sure nothing you see is intentionally avoided.
2. I have given everything I see [in this room, on this street, from this window, in this place] all the meaning it has for me.
The exercises for this sentence are the same as the first one. Begin with the things that are near to you, and apply the idea to whatever your glance rests upon. Then increase the range outward. Apply this idea as you look around you, on both sides, and behind you.
3. With this exercise, you apply the idea on a more abstract level. This practice period begins with spending about a minute noticing the thoughts that are crossing your mind.
These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see [in this room, on this street, from this window, in this place.]
Apply the idea to your thoughts. Say to yourself, "This thought about________(fill in the blank with your thought) does not mean anything. It is like the things I see [in this room, on this street, from this window, in this place.]"
May your days be zestier as you notice the interpretations you make and change the ones that don't support you.
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