Making Sense

Awoke early this morning with a recurring thought: absorbing, absorption, accumulating, absorbing…..over and over again.

It finally dawned on me that the theme was gathering the realities of life and making sense of them. My idea seemed to say, as you age your acquire more experience and perspective and combined, how these all relate to one another helps build an understanding of my world.

Well, Duh, you say! Think I would say the same depending on my age at the time I heard this conclusion! But think about it. Ask someone to spit out rapidly a succession of topics; best if the topics are one to three words, or names of persons you might know. Write down some of these topics; again, this should be done in rapid fire.

Now, quickly rattle off something about the topic, just off the top of your head. Don’t obsess over this. What I’m asking you to do is recall the general topic and state something you remember about it.

My guess is your memory will spew forth more the older you are. You have absorbed more information about the topic as the years passed. You will think about the topic differently as well as time goes by.

For example, react to these topics:

1. Tylenol
2. 9/11
3. white wall tires
4. open concept floor plan
5. parenting, roles
6. careers
7. education
8. art
9. music
10. literature 

No go back and scribble down a phrase or sentence on each.  Such as:

1. product tampering, sealed medical packages
2. foreign attack, on American soil; terrorism
3. stupid fad for cars; hardly available now
4. modern housing floor plan; not chopped up
5. nurturing my kids and helping them build self reliance
6. how I spend my life making money to support my family; successive careers
7. learning who I am and how to succeed in dealing with the rest of the world
8. inner expression of a person seeking to communicate with others; visual, performing, creative
9. an art form that forms emotional responses, ideas
10. printed language that informs, educates and nurtures intellectual growth 

Try this with other people. Intentionally seek people of different ages. Study how they expressed themselves; first the common expressions used by others; then the divergence of answers. Be sure to mark the age of each respondent.

If my hunch is correct responses will be richer and more diverse among the older persons.

Why is this important? Not sure it is, but the thought is that we constantly absorb more experience, information and feeling about matters around us without realizing we grow in perspective. Some responses may surprise you. Some will be predictable. But others will veer off into a meaning you might not have thought about.

View a DVD of the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt. Tell me what it is about. Younger people will likely say this is a movie about baseball. Is it? If not, what is it about? Or in addition to baseball, what is it about.

Similarly, the movie Tree of Life, again starring Brad Pitt, is about what? What is the message of the movie? We had trouble with this film until we saw it a second time. The artistry is stunning. Imagery is fluid, constantly shifting. Parables of parables maybe.

At any rate these two movies might spark some interesting discussions among your friends or family. I think the older audience members will have a vastly different take on each movie. It takes more life experience to understand some topics. Not always clearly, but at least a different perspective.

Try this exercise and see for yourself what develops.  Who knows? You may be a budding film critique!!

June 14, 2012