Journey to the realm of meaning
You are not meant to understand it all
Communication is a waltz of context and meaning. And words are just one way to communicate. They are matter, like bricks in the mason’s barrow, or fat gouache on the painter’s palette and smock. Words are raw material.
What words point to is non-material, wooly, and wild. This is the realm of meaning.
In English, the word “child” is represented by five symbols (called graphemes) and by three sounds (called phonemes). But what these all mean is something else altogether. Anchored by this word, let’s rappel down into the realm of meaning.
Child means:
A biological state. The time before puberty or adulthood.
A mental state. In contrast to “mature.”
A value judgement. “Childish” is slander; “child-like” can be a compliment.
A cultural construct. Expressed in traditions like the bar mitzvah, the rumspringa, or the Sateré-Mawé bullet-ant ritual.
A legal construct. A benchmark for rights around suffrage, marriage, and vice.
A relation. You are a child to your parents; your parents are children too.
A category. It includes everyone who has ever existed, and more usefully, small people with snot on their faces.
Entering the realm of meaning can feel like roller skating through a hall of mirrors with kaleidoscopes strapped to your eyeballs. It's a ponderous, fluid place, teeming with heterogeneous concepts, ideas, and feelings. As humans, we have no choice but to try to make sense of this place. It’s the reason we have myth, religion, narrative, and philosophy.
Let's climb back to safety.
You may think that it is your job to Make Sense of this morass, bust it down to its logical studs. Label everything.
Put down the labelmaker. Your “job” is to get goopy. With meaning.
Marinating in meaning doesn’t often resemble writing. It can feel like a walk through the forest. Or being moved by a soap opera in a foreign language.
The realm of meaning can be cruel. A placard met with tear gas. A fatal diagnosis on your best friend’s birthday.
The realm of meaning can be liberating. Dancing alone in the kitchen. Climbing a grassy knoll and rolling down it with your child, because you realize you are one too.
The realm of meaning can be overwhelming. But that’s because it contains everything and anything; you are not meant to understand it all.
We descend into the realm of meaning to remember that our words are just tools. Lists, frameworks, rules, PowerPoint, it’s all just stuff pointing to this wordless and mysterious place where experience happens.
Smallish Picnic
A soft blanket in the grass for pals and practitioners.
Must you learn the software du jour? Scott Kubie’s delightful take, “Learn thinky things” resonates with the Smallish way. Tools come and go, but design is a process that persists through trends, fads, or whatever else is so hot right now.