Assigning Meaning
Meanings are made up in human minds, and perpetuated by common agreement. They vary according to place and time and heritage. Your personal meanings vary with your need, or mood, or what you ate for breakfast. You give meanings to things, just as people in other parts of the world during other periods of history have given meanings to things. Sometimes those meanings are shared. At other times they are vastly different, and disagreement about them causes wars. But in and of themselves, things don't have meaning. Things simply are.
Look at something near you right now - a lamp, a chair, a diamond ring, a scratch on your finger. What does it mean?
For you, the lamp may simply mean something to light your page. For the antique dealer, it may mean a profitable sale. For the child, it may mean something pretty to play with. For your mother, it may mean a recollection of the old homestead where it first stood. Each person will treasure, discard, or ignore the lamp based on the meaning they have assigned it.
The meaning you assign to something can change from one moment to the next. The ring that you wear today and treasure as the sign of external fidelity or friendship may tarnish in the back of your drawer next year. Meanings change because people's lives change.
Since meaning comes from inside of you, finding meaning will be a process of going to the source - yourself.
The past
is dead
The future
is imaginary
Happiness
can only be
in the Eternal
Now
Moment
This sunset . . .
This smile . . .
This word you are writing . . .
This pain you are feeling . . .
The question you are asking . . .
This omelet you are cooking . . .
The meaning of life
is the tear of joy
shed at the
sight of
the
well-cooked omelet.
—Jere Pramuk