making meaning

Written By Bill Hulseman

Koi pond at the Japanese Friendship Garden and Museum, San Diego, CA. Photo by the author.

Wanna make a little meaning? Here’s one of my favorite exercises: break open a text. Say there’s a passage you come across and it grabs you for some reason–you don’t grasp its meaning, you sense but can’t quite see layers, you think it’s lovely, or you’re not sure how to connect it to something else. Break it open. 

Say, for example, you’re feeling a bit of despair and hopelessness. Something about the current socio-political climate has shaken you, and you’re clinging to your last threads of optimism. Looking for some inspiration to make meaning out of all of it, you’re reading essays from The Marginalian, Maria Popova’s blog, and you come across this: 

You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway — because life is transient but possible, because love alone bridges the impossible and the eternal.

from Maria Popova, “Love Anyway”

Oof. Words like death and loss and indifference seem to resonate with the world you’ve navigating, and words like love and light and possible are little glimmers of hope and make you think you might’ve stumbled onto what you’re looking for. So you start to unpack it. Break the paragraph into distinct ideas or phrases. 

You know that the price of life is death, 
that the price of love is loss, 

and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, 
knowing that the light will soon fade, 
knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, 

and you love anyway — 
because life is transient but possible, 
because love alone bridges the impossible and the eternal.

This part feels a bit like diagramming sentences (my favorite thing from Fifth Grade…Mrs. Lovas inspired in me a lifelong love of diagramming sentences). Break it down further and further, and indent dependent clauses until you start to see something differently. 

  • You know 

    • that the price of life is death, 

    • that the price of love is loss, 

  • and still 

    • you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, 

      • knowing that the light will soon fade, 

      • knowing that the loving face too will one day fade 

        • to indifference or bone, 

  • and you love anyway — 

    • because life is transient but possible, 

    • because love alone bridges 

      • the impossible and the eternal.

At this point, I always feel like I can see the magic of language at work. A wordy and compound sentence breaks open and transforms into poetry. Phrases and words that were buried suddenly shine, and words that were links in a chain become whole worlds. Which words or phrases stand out to you now? Why–or more specifically, what comes up for you? In its original paragraph, I lost “and still” to the words that followed; my focus was on the watching despite knowing that the light and the face will fade. But now, standing alone, I see a whole world of experience packed into “still.” Sure, it’s a fact that I know the links between life and death and love and loss, but I don’t always take the time to remember how I know that. 

“Still” halts me and opens me to remembering, to summoning the grief and pain that have lived not-too-far below the surface for so long. All of those experiences, all of those feelings return, and I have a choice: I can give in to the grief and let it consume me, or I use it to propel me forward. The more I remember, the more profound and powerful the instinct to love, the louder Popova’s insights resonate. I remember not just the loss and the pain but also the joy and the pleasure. I recognize that it’s precisely those experiences that made me prioritize empathy in my life and my relationships, that made me more patient, that remind me to breathe, to look for the bigger picture or the horizon. I let all of this fuel me and I recognize that, whatever the cost, whatever the uncertainty, whatever the pain, it’s worth it to love. And it’s this recognition that tells me I’ve made some meaning–I personally, spiritually, and intellectually find an insight that resonates with my experiences and inspires in me new or renewed awareness, confidence, capacity, or hope. 

This language comes from an essay Popova posted last year about the abiding nature of love that weaves an unlikely connection between novelist Louise Erdrich’s The Painted Drum, paleontologist Loren Eisley’s essay “The Judgment of the Birds.” For many years, I’ve been fascinated by Maria Popova. Through the brief essays on her blog, The Marginalian, she reflects on and makes beautiful and generative connections between contemporary and long-gone voices from a wide range of fields and contexts to make meaning out of our collective experiences. She’s described as a writer or essayist, but I think of her as a public intellectual, someone who can speak across academic, intellectual, and social boundaries and help us all understand and shape our shared culture. It would be easy to alienate readers with the topics she explores. Instead, she makes ancient and obscure texts relevant not through literary analysis but by weaving a dialogue between a text, other voices from different times and places who echo or contrast that text, and her personal experience. It’s an accessible and beautiful method for making meaning. 

Quick and accessible language in the form of mottos, catchphrases, and memes dominate today. If you’re engaged in any medium of popular culture, you probably feel overstimulated and oversaturated like I do, and one of the trends that bugs me (bugs me? worries? annoys? concerns? is a signal of the fall of civilization?) is the elevation of pithy quotes that don’t necessarily come from great or even particularly interesting sources. That, to me, is just another version of shouting into the ether. In a world of memes and pithy, decontextualized aphorisms, I value voices like Popova who respect the complexities and possibilities of language, who seek a dialogue with diverse voices. Even Popova posts quotes regularly, but not to shout–to invite into deeper reflection, into conversation. She cites writers and thinkers and scientists whose work and impact point to a path forward. Sometimes, I see familiar names appear; other times my curiosity is piqued about the voices she includes. I can credit Popova’s blog with introducing me to figures who have deeply shaken my worldview and given me language I couldn’t find elsewhere. The other day, she posted a quote from Tennessee Williams:

The world is violent and mercurial – it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love – love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend.

I can think of no better anthem for the days ahead, but I’ve only started to unpack what Williams means and the ways the world has had its way with me, the ways I have been saved by love, the ways I’ve seen those roles as vehicles for loving. 

  • The world 

    • is violent and mercurial – 

    • it will have its way with you. 

  • We are saved only by love – 

    • love for each other 

    • and the love that we pour 

      • into the art we feel compelled to share: 

        • being a parent; 

        • being a writer; 

        • being a painter; 

        • being a friend.

Bill Hulseman
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