“Life is what you make it.”
“If I said there is no inherent meaning to life happening or evolving around you, it would likely cause upset. At a fundamental level, most people subscribe to the idea that life has meaning. In fact, many people hold to the idea that life has meaning because God has a plan and is continuously weaving together the circumstances of our lives to achieve it. This is what people often mean when they say things like, “God is in control” or “God has a purpose in everything.”
But consider for a moment that one of our essential characteristics as being born out of the image, likeness and being of God is that we are creators. What if life doesn’t have a predetermined, inherent, or set meaning, but we are invited to create it? What if life is just what happens, and you and I create or add the meaning?
We know already that no two people are ever experiencing the same meaning of life. All of life is happening as a byproduct of our perception, which is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting the information we collect through our senses – what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch. But even this perception happens inside a personalized map, model, construct, script, story or frame that we have been conditioned into about the way things are. The mind further develops prototypes, paradigms, concepts, categories, stereotypes and labels that further reinforce our particular view.
We have all heard it said, “Life is what you make it.” This may be more true than we imagined. Life is going to show up in a way that supports our personalized story, map, model, script, and construct. For many of us, that’s the bad news because our model or script is false, inadequate, lacking or self-sabotaging. The good news is that because you created it, you can divest your commitment to it, and create something different. It takes time to deconstruct and reconstruct the frame or model with which we interpret the meaning of life.
I don’t think there is a formula for this but here are two ways to think about exploring this further: (1) What are your highest notions about yourself, life, God, humankind? What would it be like if “integrity” meant honoring those highest notions in every moment? (2) Rather than the burden of trying to determine some conclusive or positive assertion about how everything is or should be, identify all the things you know it’s not and just be present to what emerges in the absence of all that clutter.”
Jim Palmer, Notes from (Over) the Edge
