Analogies and Meaning
I watched Jumanji the other day, the one with Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black. I enjoyed it. It was a funny and entertaining light-hearted comedy filmed in a beautiful landscape. The plot moved along and the writing was quite good. It made me laugh, but I didn’t think too much about it after it ended.
A few days later, however, I realized that Jumanji was essentially a redesigned version of The Breakfast Club, one of my favorite movies. Suddenly, the movie had more meaning to me than it did before this thought. The movie itself didn’t change, but because I could draw a connection between the major plot elements in both movies, I carried forth some of the emotional experience from the Breakfast Club over to Jumanji. Now, Jumanji will remind me of The Breakfast Club, which is a good thing. Yes, while original plots are wonderful for their uniqueness, it was still impressive that by simply drawing a connection between two seemingly different movies I was able to increase the meaning of the movie forever.
This made me think about what meaning is. From where does it come? How can meaning increase after an experience has already happened? Can we just decide to create more meaning? If so, why don’t we do it all the time?
I think that meaning originally comes from an emotional experience. For example, the word ‘Christmas’ carries a certain sense of magic with it for some. Perhaps for others, though, it carries with it sadness. Either way, I think that the feeling one experiences when they hear the word Christmas originally comes from the emotions that person experienced through their collective Christmases. Over time, the word becomes associated with those past emotions, and is a shortcut to the original emotions, even though the person may be no longer aware of this connection.
Applying this phenomenon, if we hear a certain song during a really pleasant Christmas moment, we may be able to attach the wonderful feelings of Christmas to that song, and increase the meaning of that song for us as well. It’s as if we can increase the meaning of things simply by attaching them to other pleasant experiences. Perhaps it forms a neuronal connection that taps into, or recreates the positive experience for a moment.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could find a way to form more connections between seemingly blasé experiences and positive experiences? We could instantly increase the meaning in our lives without having to change the actual experiences. How glorious it would be to merely review our day’s adventures, connecting the dots, so to speak, and finding more meaning in what we initially thought was boring or uninspiring. Imagine further, if this technique was applied over weeks and months, allowing us to substantially increase the meaning in our entire life, providing us with an altogether increased sense of satisfaction and contentment. Wouldn’t that be grand?
