Imagine a game of basketball comes down to the last play. There’s 1 second to go, scores are level and someone hits a shot right on the buzzer to win the game.
The fans of the winning team go nuts, jumping out of their chairs screaming, hugging and high-fiving one another (it’s a pre-COVID game of basketball after all).
The fans of the losing team slump forward in their chairs, throw their hats on the ground and look for the exit.
The neutral fan is somewhere in the middle, in awe of what a great game they witnessed and not as invested in the result as the other two parties.
Everyone in the crowd has seen the exact same series of events and ascribes an entirely different meaning to said events. This meaning, depending on who they choose to support, then shapes how they feel, behave and respond to others.
Without the basketball analogy: We each create our own meaning of things that we see/read/hear/consume.
Of course, this isn’t only true in a hypothetical game of basketball.
So the thing that has me scratching my noodle, puffing my imaginary pipe and peering out the window over my spectacles is: What am I choosing to give meaning to? What would it look like if I didn’t?