I used to obsess about what things meant. As a teenager, I’d sit and stare at my bedroom walls or my life, wondering what they were made of. When I’d stare long enough, the walls would begin to blur and breathe. I realized I was never looking at things “out there” in the first place. I could only look at the looking itself.
Meaning, too, is found in the looking. Meanings constantly change shape and form. When you stare too long, they warp like the visual field. They emerge from the way you look at things, from the stories you tell about them.
As an adult, I spend slightly less time staring at walls. Instead I ponder the meaning of much more grown up things, like all my failed relationships. What did all those mean?
Some days, a particular ex looks like a pile of mistakes. Sometimes they present as bulked-up hamstrings and sex appeal. Other days I remember them like a lesson. And one absentminded morning on the bus, I simply remember them as the best thing I ever got to love.
Which of these was the real story? Which of them gets closest to the meaning of the pile of moments called “a relationship”? Is it the story where I’m a monster incapable of love, smashing hearts like Godzilla, who must be banned from dating? Is it the story where all of my partners had enormous flaws that just happened to be foisted on me, a complete innocent? Is it the one where all the players are basically good, but the shifting nature of wants is that they can’t all be satisfied for everyone all the time? Which story is true, and how can I know?
Maybe I can’t. Every story, including this one, emerges from a particular set of events, plucked from the vast web of time. This process of selection is inherently biased; no plot can encapsulate the entirety of experience. There are no inherently true stories. There are only stories. And if we pause the storytelling, even for a moment, conceptual meaning dissolves completely.
So stories and meanings are made of events in time, but what is a moment in time made of? Like Kurt Vonnegut, “I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."
When I remember a single moment, like the one where I started a fight about Sweetgreen, what do I actually recall? I don’t remember what my partner was wearing. I don’t remember the expression on his lips, or the exact words coming out of them. I don’t remember his body language. I don’t remember the sensations in my chest. I don’t remember my exact thoughts at the time, or the exact words that I said. Does such a vague and hazy sketch even qualify as a “moment?” When we remember the past, we assume we recall a series of moments. But perhaps we only recall more stories.
Stories are built from moments, but moments are built from stories. The self-referential nature of meaning, constantly consuming and recreating itself, lacks external justification. The whole thing rests not on solid ground, but merely on more of itself. It’s stories all the way down.
Regardless, I still find joy in telling stories and making meanings. It is a very human thing to do. But I conceive of the activity of meaning-making as being less like architecture and more like pottery. I agonize less about figuring out the stable, exact, correct meaning of any particular thing. Instead, I mostly sit amazed that things seem to mean anything at all. I watch meanings spin and breathe like life, like clay on a wheel, like time, like bedroom walls. What a gorgeous trick.
Love this!! Seeing the deconstruction of narrative is helpful, and also kind of ...annoying? like wait that's not true, that's not exactly right, etc etc
" I agonize less about figuring out the stable, exact, correct meaning of any particular thing"
I've been getting better at practicing this and seeing that ANY story i say will never actually match the moment(s), so might as well just send it and let go of trying to have it fit so perfectly