In search of meaning

Underneath all the actions and commotions of life, the meaning lens becomes the most important aspect of everyday experience. Without meaning, the hours remain unfilled and time simply passes by without contributing to the experience of it. Meaning infuses everything with the quality essential to accessing all other states we deem essential: happiness, fulfillment, purpose.

The search for meaning has always existed, and you see it expressed in culture in different ways. It rarely surfaces directly because it's one of those elusive topics people avoid discussing. They're difficult, so we choose silence instead, talking about more accessible subjects: who did what, and how they did it. I apologize for the slightly pretentious tone.

For me personally, meaning continues to be the guiding force in my choices and actions. Often it's difficult to put into words. The state of meaning is more of an experience. When I experience it, there's a distinct feeling that makes it obvious. There's calmness and composure in that state.

I also see it in the world, in the expressions of people walking by. Somehow, the ones who've found meaning are rendered differently. More composed, not rushed, more measured. They move with no need to prove anything.

In the context of Cadence, meaning is the fundamental dimension. As with pretty much everything worth experiencing, meaning lies beyond the surface and takes time to reach. It takes time both to discover a direction of meaning through trials guided by intuition, and to descend into the layers of experience that are infused by meaning.

Meaning is not inherently present. It is something we, people, construct through connecting the dots of our experiences. There seem to be vessels that we carry inside ourselves where we store memories and connections, definitions and thoughts. We accumulate all of these threads and arrange them in patterns that make these parts of us meaningful. It is a two-step process: first, it is following a path of sorts that reveals the moments in the thread, and second is the arrangement through language and images of all the gems into a meaningful ornament.

Definitions we assign to the events and thoughts and people and memories color everything into a particular hue, and the full arrangement attains the composition that is balanced and meaningful. Sometimes definitions tend to change, at which point the vessel shatters and the meaning is lost and all of the pieces of the composition become scattered through the mind. At that point we start again, picking up all the pieces and starting the process of collection and arrangement and searching for another set of meanings.

In my experience, this beautiful process goes on and on. Cadence helps me keep track of the process in a structured way, and keep me ground giving me the system that I use to record my experience during the quest for meaning.