If you’ve taken in my first and second suggested ‘Website starting points’, you may still be thinking about the strange fundamental facts of our existence.
We live on a revolving rock in outer space, surviving by breathing in and out an invisible (but shared and tangible) fluid. If it weren’t for this fluid, our rock could not support plants or animals or human beings. That’s the world we exist in.
But not, of course, the world we live in. Living, we see people and things that we recognise (or try to find out about); we do things that we have to, or want to—usually with some purpose in mind. What is more, in the ordinary way of things, most of what we see and do makes sense to us.
In other words, we live in an interpreted world. We started assigning meaning to things as babies, long before we were able to talk, or understand the words other people used. A harmless example: when people smiled, we knew they liked us; when they shouted, we knew they were upset with us.
You may have wondered about that treacherous word ‘knew’. A better word might have been ‘assumed’. What we do, of course, is form habits of interpretation. (It’s hardly surprising that, as children, we are likely to feel obscurely to blame when parents shout at one another.)
Accidents, shocks and surprises can break the pattern of anyone’s life, of course. But our habits make us who we are—and we stack the cards in our favour if we form helpful habits, and free ourselves from unhelpful habits.
Habits of interpretation can be found in both classes.