Words for Making Sense of It All

[ The next few posts will be from my book-in-progress The Skeptical Believer. Each will be a digestible excerpt from a section exploring how we make meaning for ourselves. ]

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“We use what we call reason to preclude thought.” Marilyn Robinson

We have more words for thinking than Eskimos have for snow—and they have dozens. All of them are attempts to get at some aspect of the ceaseless human process of making sense of things. The following are all words related to some part of the process, and this is the short list: intellect, logic, reason, intuition, judgment, curiosity, experience, evaluation, measurement, calculation, comprehension, creativity, discernment, cognition, weighing, memory, prudence, perception, inference, deduction, induction, explanation, discrimination, understanding and imagination. Also part of the process, embarrassingly to some, are emotions, personality, desires, hopes, aspirations, experiences, fears, will, prejudices, character and guesses.

All of these concepts and activities, and many more, contribute to the ultimate purpose of all thought: to help us survive and thrive in a sometimes perilous world. What we are trying to do, in a phrase, is make sense of it all.

Making sense is messy. It is also at one time or another difficult, wearisome, scary, contradictory, and impossible. At the same time, it can be satisfying, comforting, encouraging, confirming, and thrilling. Some people pretend to give up on making sense of things, but no one ever really does. No day passes in anyone’s life that they don’t engage in some sense-making activity. For the reflective person, the day is filled with moments of trying to figure it all out.

You are probably such a person, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Think over your own life: how often do you read a book or an article or listen to someone in hopes of better understanding some part of yourself or the world? How often do you find yourself turning over ideas in your mind, how often find yourself probing and questioning something that other’s believe without question? How often do you try to put two and two together, how often tie yourself up in mental and psychological knots, with the hope that a little more reflection will untie them?

The messiness of sense-making has certain implications for any thought-filled person, including the skeptical believer. They include the following. [To be continued]