Meaning and the Post-It Note, part 1

Note: I’ve been feeling annoyingly introspective lately, so you might start getting an excessive number of posts about Meaning and Life and such. So… deal with it. J

I have noticed that the way we experience events depends on our internal explanations of these events. Here’s an example from my first months of marriage:

Brice usually left for work before I headed off to class. This means he got up, showered, and left sometimes even before I officially got out of bed. Then I would get up and shower and get ready for the day. And I started noticing something. He always left the shower curtain open. So I was always closing it and trying to make sure that mildew didn’t form on the wet crinkles of the el-cheapo curtain. Now, being the dutiful newlywed wifey that I was, I certainly didn’t want to make a big deal of it. After all, he always put the cap back on the toothpaste and never left the toilet seat up, so I just needed to deal with this one. No one’s perfect, I said with a sigh. And yet, as the weeks passed, you can imagine that this sighing forbearance didn’t really do its job very well, and I found myself increasingly annoyed that he couldn’t just close the shower curtain to let it dry off instead of getting moldy.

Finally I decided that instead of turning this into a grudge I should ask why he did it. Now remember, I thought he was doing it because he was being thoughtless, but here’s what he said: He left it open because he knew I’d be getting up soon and he was leaving it open for me.

Suddenly I wanted to hug him.

A single experience—the shower curtain being left open. When I assigned the “thoughtless” meaning, I was cranky. But when my meaning changed, my reaction changed. I was happy and fluttery (newlywed, remember; even shower curtains make us fluttery happy).

So much of our experience comes not from the actual event but from the meaning we make of it.

Now here’s a paranoid example. When I was a teenager, I didn’t like it when groups of teenage boys laughed. It made me feel tense and nervous. For some unknown reason, I always thought they were laughing at me. (I did already mention this was paranoid, right? I’m fairly sure they weren’t actually laughing at me. … Although, hmmm… You never know.) If I had assumed insteay that they’d heard a funny joke, I would have reacted differently.

I saw this in my therapist days all the time. Everyone has a story to explain why something happened. He didn’t put the dishes away in the right place because he doesn’t care what I want. She got angry at me about those dishes because she’s too controlling. My child is drawing on the walls because she’s a bad kid who needs to be punished. My child is drawing on the walls because she’s trying to get my attention. My child is drawing on the walls because she really likes art and hasn’t learned the rules yet. We all do it, all the time. I think we are wired to make meanings and stories out of the world around us.

So, when does it matter? When the meaning we make is so negative or incorrect that it negatively impacts our behavior or our emotions. (Or when the meaning we make is so positive that it positively changes us, of course—but that seems to happen less frequently.)

Can we change our meanings? Absolutely. I think one trick is to imagine a plausible positive meaning to ascribe to someone’s behavior—and then act as though it may in fact be true. And when we make a new meaning, we are freed to act differently.

So the next time someone cuts you off in traffic, try this: Maybe that person was hurrying to get a sick child to the emergency room. Too clichéd? Try this then: Maybe the person was just temporarily distracted by an energetic toddler in the backseat. Or maybe the person is a terrible driver who’s just trying to practice and get better; she wasn’t being rude, she was just being clueless (yes, this is slightly autobiographical). Then think for a minute. Are you going to flip her off? Or are you going to take a deep breath and give her a little more space?

Now try something a little harder. When was the last time your spouse/best friend/sibling/parent did something that really pushed your buttons? Can you come up with a neutral or even positive reason why he/she may have done it? And can you act as if it were true? I think if you do, you will be kinder, gentler, more patient. You will be less angry, more forgiving, just generally happier and better.

And what does all this have to do with a post-it note? You’ll just have to wait and see.