“What do you mean by ‘meaning’?”

The question paused me like a roadblock. “Meaning” is one of those big words, like “love,” we use a lot, but what do we mean by it?

“Stay tuned,” I shrugged sheepishly.

Most of us use language sloppily. There are reasons for this.

· Saying what one means precisely is hard.

· Few listen precisely, why speak precisely?

· We may not know what we “mean” or

· … we may be disinclined to disclose it.

· Precise speakers sound sniffy.

· Gestures – grunts, shrugs, emojis, etc. – are so much easier.

Other creatures express themselves with less difficulty because they have fewer means, less syntax, smaller vocabularies. The invention of writing gave humans the opportunity to write badly, of which we’ve taken full advantage. Other animals don’t lie, obfuscate, fudge, bullshit, or otherwise mislead. I don’t always know what dog-pal Henry’s telling me, but I’m sure he’s never insincere.

The word itself – “meaning” – acknowledges its own defeat, pointing to a murky substratum of signification beneath what we do or say. “That had a lot of meaning,” “that wasn’t what I meant,” “what do you mean by that!” and countless variations plead for clarification. And the harder we try to explain, the more we flail in what T.S. Eliot called the “mess of imprecision” – if you know what I mean.

Professionals – academics, scientists, lawyers, self-styled “philosophers” – in pursuit of precision often end up composing impossible prose. Does Hegel mean what he says? I’ll never know: his writing is impassable to this brain: I could as easily comprehend Arabic or computer code. Tots fume with frustration at their inability to explain – I know the feeling!

What I mean by “meaning” – my search discovers – isn’t some mystic dimension available only to devotees or adepts. I distrust religions that rely on communal swoons. Ecstasy, I suspect, is more often feigned than felt.

What I mean by “meaning” is something more accessible, tangible, like a plant’s root one can get at by digging. Everything in our world connects to everything else and that connection, glimpsed, helps us understand everything else. Of the infinitude of details that surround me this moment – the drawn shade (dawn peaking in), the empty orange vial for a prescription drug, Henry dripping like a towel off his favored chair, my teetering book stacks and lit laptop screen – has something to teach me if I heed. Behind actuality, as behind a tapestry, is a deeper reality, how the strands connect, web and woof, which it excites me to explore. A seemingly simple question – “What do you mean by ‘meaning’?” – admits me to the immensity of my ignorance, bewilderment, and to my glorious opportunity to know more. I am only beginning to understand the world and my place in it – what luck is that, non-stop entertainment until dark! I do not want to die with so much left to explore – and I do not want not to die, for that would make existence a prison… it’s complicated.

While I am subject to bouts of depression, I choose to see such fits as my fault, not my fate. I’ve temporarily lost sight of wonder in a siege of blindness, so must get cracking restoring my sight. Viktor Frankl’s conclusion in his holocaust memoir, The Search for Meaning, comes close to mine. Purpose, love, and courage – ideas – give us “meaning,” that is, connection – to others and my hour. My life has meaning because I think it does, and if I lose that meaning, I must think harder. The beauty of being is so if I think so.

That, friend, is what I mean by “meaning.”