Every Meaning

I read every meaning I know how to read.

Words are magic for the way we can lay meaning upon them.

Words are tricksy for the way anyone can lay their own meaning upon them.

I have learned through writing that I read in an uncommon way—I read everything. Words show me every shade of meaning, words reveal the speaker and the writer.

Comments reveal the reader, and I see how quickly some people come to the conclusion that they know just what I am saying, that I am saying this one thing in particular, and whether they offer criticism or praise, I know they are missing the bulk of the point.

I read every meaning possible in an important line, and sometimes I read every meaning inevitably in every line. Comments also reveal that I am not alone in this.

I hear every meaning, too. This is why I am a prolific punster—this collection of sounds can mean so many things, can reference and infer, because these words mean so many things AND the sounds mean so many things, and I am compelled by all of them, aware of all of them (and aware I'm only aware of a small fraction of them).

Context is everything. That is a sentence which is so simple that it has many different meanings. Everything seems to be what it is because of the context provided by every single thing I know and do not know. Context is the most powerful force in meaning-making. All things are context for all things. The context I carry influences every single thing I experience.

Also the phrase "it is what it is." That is a phrase packed with wisdom, dropped casually, likely meant to mean one thing in particular, a blithe dismissal in the form of purest truth.

The Tao Te Ching says "nobody can protect a house full of gold and jade." I think of how you can have it and not protect it, how you will try to protect it and fail, how pride will say your protection might have been better. I think of how you might never fill your house with gold and jade if you know you can't protect it, I think what a sad life, to go without what is precious for the way it is fleeting. I think of myself. I read it and think of the children, that house full of gold and jade which parents are desperate to protect and which is inevitably vulnerable always. NOBODY can protect the children.

Words are what we use to refer to everything. Words are what we use to defend the idea that I can convey to someone else exactly what I mean.

But words mean too many things, and their interpretation is far too vast, and the context of their interpretation is woefully unknown, as is the context of their production, for words to ever convey exactly one meaning.

Even meaning is a story of words, a revision of experience.

Experience is what is happening, the only pure truth.

It is what it is.