Day 31

Today was our second to last group session and I am feeling rather contemplative.  A comment that was said during the session really struck me and I am sort of dwelling in it as I try to process its meaning.  The comment was "we are meaning making machines."  It sounds silly - definitely a bit alliterative - but it is really sitting heavy with me.  The context is that most of our stories and the lies we tell ourselves come from childhood.  We take what our siblings/teachers/parents do or say and at some point we interpreted those actions or inactions somehow as having a specific meaning - they were rejecting us in some way or another.  We take the critique of our performance during a dance recital, a teasing comment about our appearance, or an indifference to our efforts, as a huge slight and from that slight we begin this toxic cycle of meaning.

Most of us can trace this cycle back to an event in our childhood, but whatever the event is, it all came from how we interpreted that situation.  We gave meaning to the situation and derived feelings from that wholly created meaning.  My Mom saying I looked awkward on the dance floor at my recital or my Dad not recognizing how I kept trying to involve him in my girl scouts so he would be proud of me - those events and comments probably didn't even register in their brainwaves. Yet I took those events as significant and I gave them the meaning they have for me in my life.  I took the comments as I am not good enough - I gave them that meaning - and then have spent a large part of the rest of my life trying to prove my worth to someone so as to invalidate that meaning - which was never really there expect in my head in the first place . . .

I am not sure I have been fully liberated yet from the chains or the beliefs of my own creation, but I am reminded that we create our own reality.  To say that our parents didn't mean to inflict whatever wounds they inflicted doesn't invalidate our feelings of hurt, it just reminds us that how, even as a child, we perceive the situation is of our own making.  That our parents didn't love us, that we were not worthy of their affection, that we were a failure, that we were ugly/awkward/skinny/naive etc. etc. etc. -- those aren't facts.  It is what we took away from whatever experiences we believe we went through.  We can believe to see those experiences differently - as meaning something else entirely. 

Ironically, I read an Op-Ed piece today in the NYT that illustrated this point better than I am tonight.  So here is the link - so you can see why Mr. Brooks is paid to share his opinions and I am not . . . http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=1&em 

I don't think I have blogged about this yet - but I recently (as part of my side-revolution) purchased and took an aptitude test.  I was hoping to gain insight into my natural abilities but also to understand better what kind of a worker bee I am, and to determine what sorts of professional and social interactions would best sustain and fulfill me.  I got my results back last week and while I haven't had my meeting with my counselor to fully analyze them, I have read this much . . . I am in the 90+ percentile for both "Analytical Reasoning" and "Diagnostic Reasoning."  According to the summary of the results that I have, people are generally higher in one or the other, not both.  What I know (at least superficially) about my results is that I am always trying to solve problems.  Both through creating logical connections between things and by making "gut" assessments and evaluating the situation with a new solution. So in thinking about my yoga group tonight, it made sense that I have so many stories in my life because I thrive on the analysis of everything.  I have often literally created meaning where the was none so that my highly reason based mind would have something to reason over.  Its like I created a meaning to interpret just because my mind might have otherwise been bored. No wonder this process has been exhausting!  I have so many layers of fabrication to go through!

The phrase "meaning making machine" really struck a chord.  What if I step back and see how much the meaning I have derived from various situations in my life is all infused with meaning of my own creation?  What if I stop and think about how much meaning I interject into each  interpretation of a sequence of events?  Then the rejection that I feel is valid but it is of my own creation.  Like I said, I am still contemplating and chewing the cud on this one . . . . but it is definitely something to think about . .  .

Namaste,
Clare