Friday, December 21, 2012

Understanding the Meaning

So I can do this two ways: find the starting point of it all and go from there, or trace it backwards going dot by dot.  OR, I can just do it my own way, which is to do it both ways...
Okay, let's start with last night - not the final penny dropping into the slot, but still a good place to start.  I was sitting on the couch in the dark, with a shot of tequila, my thoughts, and a pad of paper and pen.  As I noted at the top of the page, I was writing down my Thoughts in the Dark - a glorified To-do list if you will.
About halfway down the page, I thought, I should blog again, and I wrote it down, and added, "think of something to blog about".
This morning I woke up super early.  It's my first day of vacation and I don't quite know what to do with myself, or rather, that's how I was feeling last night, which was why I made myself a list!  So I jumped out of bed, because the first thing on my list was 'coffee and computer stuff'... As I plugged in my password to one of my accounts, I was frustrated for the zillionth time that I had keyed it in wrong and had to do it again, and I thought, just change the damn password.  And that's when the penny dropped.  You see, the potential password I came up with to replace the complicated one I was using is in fact the title of this blog!  (I'm fond of using concepts for passwords, although I intersperse them with symbols and numbers to throw any would-be hacker off the trail). 
Lately, I've been seeing the meaning of a lot of things, and I've come to the conclusion that Meaning is the definition of that certain force beyond ourselves.  I know this force as Good minus one of the 'o's, although 'Good' in itself works well too come to think of it!  But I don't want to infringe on anyone's right to believe or not to believe, and to call what they believe in whatever name they believe is correct.  What I have discovered, at any rate, is this:  if you find meaning in something, then it follows logically that there's something behind that meaning.  Meaning by definition can never be be meaningless!  The point is, meaning is stimulated by circumstances outside ourselves; we perceive meaning and make it part of ourselves.  Finding and understanding meaning gives us reasons to live.
Here's how I came to that conclusion:  I was driving to work the other morning, very early as usual.  It was the morning after the 3rd night of the full moon, so the moon was still going down, gigantic, full and white.  As I wound around a curve, taking several quick glances out my window to marvel at the moon hanging next to the Popo volcano, I also took a second to look out the passenger side window, where lo and behold, the sun was coming up, huge, round and orange, at the exact diagonal to the moon going down.  It was so breathtaking, looking out my window to the moon, and then turning my head to see the sun!  And I was crossing under the arc, right at the middle, made by the symmetrically perfect synchronization of these two events. It was some trip, let me tell you!
Now I could have continued on my way, seeing what I saw as just what it was: sun coming up on one side, moon going down on the other.  Simple everyday occurrence.  But the way I was driving through the middle of it, able to turn right and left to see one natural phenomenon and then the other, happening at an exact diagonal to each other, at an exact ratio of rise to set... it sent a shiver down my spine and brought a lump to my throat.  Tears came to my eyes.  It was clear to me that what I was seeing was not just an "everyday occurrence".  It was something absolutely miraculous! 
And yet, it does happen every day... so that's when I finally put it all together.  You see, I could have driven by a few minutes later, and seen nothing unusual, but I got to see the exact moment where the meaning was visible.  I got to be part of the miracle unfolding.  That's all I needed to understand about it. 
Knowing it was there, and I had seen it, been part of it, and understood the meaning of it up to that point took me to the final and most important realization:  There's a message in the Meaning!
And the message I got was: The possibilities are limitless!
Whew!  Now that's what I call a revelation!