May 31, 2025

Life is a canvas on which we get to paint.

Have you ever thought that someone was mean to you in one moment, only to realize the next moment that they meant it totally differently than you interpreted it?

It is an experience we often have — we realize that things didn’t mean what we thought they meant — but mostly, we leave it at that and don’t go the extra step in questioning what that could entail.

We live inside the meanings we or others made up. You see it on social media, you see it on TV, you hear it in the conversations people have.

Being an American means… People in the corporate world are… Being a good mum is doing… To be a man, you need to… Good marketing always has…

And on and on it goes.

The meanings we make are not wrong or right (that would be me making it mean that), but they are extremely powerful in shaping a human’s life.

Things only mean something when you make them mean something. It is you — only you — who gives meaning to life, people, events, things, thoughts, feelings, and the meaning others make.

If you hear someone say, “To win in business you need to be a shark,” and you hear that and say to yourself, “That’s not true for me,” you’ve successfully closed the door to the meaning of another dictating your life.

The market does something, and one part of the investment gurus makes it mean fear — you can’t win in this market.

It needs a human to say that for it to be so. The market does what the market does. People do what people do. And you make it mean whatever you make it mean.

And there is beauty in meaning-making — don’t get me wrong — but not seeing drama for what drama is creates more drama, even if we don’t want that.

This is not to say, don’t create meaning — as you’ll discover, you always do — but to be responsible for the meaning you make and choose it to create the life you want to live.

I could end my writings here, and if you would allow this to sink in, you would recognize the enormous freedom in this fact: you are the meaning maker of your life.

It means you need nothing but yourself to make life meaningful, to create purpose, to invent what life is, and to reinvent who you are in life.