“Forge Meaning. Build Identity”

So today I was browsing YouTube and I happened to come across the latest TED Talks video featuring Andrew Solomon, a writer on politics, culture and psychology.

Now there’s obviously no need for me to go into the depth of his eloquent flow of words, but the motto or the conclusive message of his 20 minute long talk was “Forge Meaning. Build Identity”.

He stressed it enough, believe me.

We’re all skipping through life and daily monotony in search of some abstract idea of meaning that has been implanted in our heads. We believe in the existence of a coherent answer that lies behind every activity taking place in the universal lap. But that often leaves us confused and fidgety.

So they tell us there are answers but who is going to lead us to the answers? Not the butterflies of Hogwarts for sure! Who, then, will accompany us on this voyage of a particularly vague self-actualization?

I think Andrew Solomon answered it brilliantly. His message in my words, of course.

Throughout the course of our life, series of events, bad and good, tragic and euphoric, take place. And that makes us who we are, undoubtedly. But a lot of us lack the courage to admit this, to take those instances and twist them in our way. We live in the misinterpretations of these episodes and keep seeking some weird revelation, we expect, will change our doomed lives. We get lost in this tangled web of expectations and dreams without realising that we can do something else instead. We can take this situation and create a meaning. The meaning that we want it to be, the message that we want to carry life-long with us.  

All successful men and women have not gone through the societal definition of a ‘rough’ childhood or even adulthood, for that matter. However, they have all gone through something that wasn't smooth and the one similarity they all possess is the message they derived from these rugged paths of life. All those autobiographies in the market can vouch for that!

So, basically, the idea is to grab a situation by its wrist and forge a meaning, a lesson, an understanding of it. We can ‘seek’ ample of ‘meanings’ in life, but what brings better satisfaction than having an Individual Something that brings humongous amount of composure?

What next?

Next is the foretelling of telling these stories. Once we’re at peace with the stories that haunt us, we start to see them in a different light. We see them, not as mistakes, but as the building bricks to the person we are today. We see them as the life we had and not the life we had to suffer. Maybe not necessarily as an opportunity or anything. But something better than the worse we thought we knew.  

And I guess, that’s when we begin to understand ourselves. Not in a very decisive way but in a way that makes us feel like we have an identity that is distinct from what people or anyone has tried to thrust upon us.  An identity that we want to share via the disappointment loaded tales from the creeks of our minds.

It’s obviously not a cake walk as I make it sound, but it’s worth a try. And moreover, it’s a beautiful perspective that Andrew Solomon has given me and it will probably intrigue for a while.