Giving Things Meaning

In an interview promoting her latest movie, actress Jennifer Lawrence recently quoted as saying the recent rash of hurricanes striking the United States is a sign of Mother Nature’s “wrath” because Donald Trump was elected as President.  

Practically the same day, 1980s child actor Kirk Cameron (“Growing Pains”) who is now a Christian Evangelist , was seen in a video, reflecting on the hurricanes. “We know that weather is sent to cause us to respond to God in humility, awe and repentance.”  

I would like to ask how these celebrities came to “know” the meaning behind a hurricane. The last I checked, scientists have determined that hurricanes are caused by warm air rising up over the ocean and bumping into cooler air coming down from the atmosphere.  

Some theorize that our need to attach meaning is human nature. We observe something happen in our world and, because of our survival instincts, we attempt to assign meaning to those events. It helps us make sense of the world and to protect ourselves from future harm. It gives us a feeling of power when we can say “This is why that happened.”

Unfortunately, because our survival needs are largely met in today’s culture of abundance, we have transferred our need to understand the meaning to things to situations where we shouldn’t. We apply our survival skills to situations where they aren’t needed. Even worse is when we attach meaning to something or a series of events in our lives and those meanings become our truths.

Most of us are guilty. A friend doesn’t call when he or she said they would. A co-worker gets the project assignment that you wanted. Our partner or our parents or our children don’t respond to a situation in a way that we assume they would. The wheels start to spin and the next thing you know, we are assigning meaning. They don’t like me anymore. I’m not performing on my job. They don’t understand me or care about me.

If we could stop before we attribute meaning and just observe the situation for what it is, we would all be much better off.

Many years ago, one of my then teenage daughters was excited about her new cell phone and was busily texting her friend as we drove to Altoona to do some back to school shopping. They were texting back and forth for most of the trip when suddenly the friend stopped responding. Two minutes became 10 minutes became half an hour and still no response. “She must be mad at something I said” my daughter said to me with concern. “Or,” I offered, “she may be in the restroom, taking a shower or her mother told her to turn it off. “ As it turns out, neither of us was right. We later learned that her cell phone battery had died and she was recharging it.

Making assumptions without facts. Assigning meaning. Both have the potential to turn into much bigger things than are necessary – especially with teenage girls.

Sometimes things just happen and there is no underlying motive or message or hidden meaning.

Your friend may have just forgotten to call you. It wasn’t personal or an end to your friendship. The other person getting the assignment does not “mean” you aren’t a good employee too. You will get the project the next time. Your partner or your parent or your child may have just been having a bad day and their anger had nothing to do with you. It’s amazing how much easier life becomes when we let go of our quest for “meaning.” It is a time and emotion saver when we stop labeling and responding to all of those emotional truths in our lives, most of which often aren’t truths at all.

One of my lifelong friends recently lost her 20-year-old son to injuries sustained in a car-pedestrian accident. To say the loss of someone so young and with so much ahead of him was and is devastating would be an understatement. At the funeral mass, I expected the priest to take the approach that is so common at funerals. There is a reason for this loss. There is a meaning behind this heartbreak. The pain that family and friends are experiencing has a “purpose.”  I expected to hear that our efforts to understand and to be understood are only successful if we can find meaning. I hate those funeral messages. Sometimes things just really suck.

In one of the most inspirational messages I have ever heard, the 80-year-old monsignor who offered the mass said he wasn’t going to go in that direction.  “Sometimes bad things just happen and we don’t understand why.”   

He reminded us that there are often no answers or hidden messages in the pain of being human. He reminded those who had gathered as a community to share our love and support for family and friends that the “meaning” will come in our efforts to keep Jordan’s spirit alive in our thoughts and in our memories.

It takes practice but letting go of the meanings that we make up in our heads about the events in our lives is incredibly freeing. Warm water, cold air and the right conditions are what causes a hurricane not the voters or an angry God. Most of the time there is no hidden reason or meaning. It just is.