Ten definitions of the Word "Meaning"

Throughout this blog, I have suggested that aesthetic experiences are “those that stand out as especially meaningful.” As if that cleared everything up.

But this is glossing over, shorthand for a wide range of experiences. What makes us call an experience meaningful? What is really happening when we feel this way? This short exploration attempts to answer these questions in at least ten ways. Ten is a lot of ways, and there is naturally some overlap. But I think a case can be made for the individual efficacy of each of these ten definitions, and probably many more. (Acknowledgements to philosopher George Santayana for this riff on his famous essay, “Some Meanings of the Word Is”).*

1. Meaning is definition: When we ask, What does that word mean?, we are asking what the word, as a symbol, signifies. We expect the response to be a synonym, or perhaps one or more phrases that clarify the definition in more detail. Experiences can have definitions as well, but more complex than a synonym can satisfy. A wedding is more than the dictionary definition of that word, its meaning might include a description of the typical rituals involved, the expectations implied and feelings associated with the experience, which also define it.
2. Meaning is importance: We call something meaningful when it is important to us, when it has or will have a large impact. A turning point in our lives is meaningful. An historic event is meaningful when it has repercussions. A statistic is meaningful when it provides clear evidence. Even a small object or event can be meaningful when it reminds us of something else significant to us—a family member, another part of our life.
3. Meaning indicates value: Similar to importance, value indicates importance, in this case in terms of our willingness to devote time or money--a more personal significance. We volunteer time for a cause because it is meaningful to us. We read about a topic, such as its history or deep explanatory texts, because it holds meaning. We spend time and money on family activities because we value those connections. Travel or sports might be meaningful for the rewards they bring, so we invest in the equipment and means to engage in them.
4. Meaning denotes relationship: The relationship of one thing to others is a part of its definition. This is particularly true for people, who define themselves by their relationships to family, profession, class, nationality, race, and of course, favorite football teams. Sometimes common tastes define a group, particularly musical tastes or favorite hobbies. Shared meaningful beliefs also create relationships. Things and events are meaningful when they help to define our relationship to society or the natural world.
5. Meaning emerges from order: We discern meaning when things are in order--well sorted, visible, and in their proper place. A text is meaningful not just by being accurate, but also by being well organized. A well-structured event is easier to engage in, we can find our way within it and know where it will take us. We know where and how to fit inside meaningful experiences and how to play a role.
6. Meaning is clarity: Order helps to provide clarity, but a clear explanation does even more to make something meaningful. When all the words work together to elucidate, when the image is discernible, when the music reaches an expected destination or engaging rhythm, these bring clarity. An experience has clarity when all the elements have a recognizable place, when the elements are expressive of a clear purpose.
7. Meaning is continuity: As much as some of us hate boredom, we hate discontinuity more. We are creatures of habit, we like to know what comes next. What a nightmare it would be to wake up in an unknown place with an unknown identity, with nothing to hang onto, needing to decide on a first step, not just a next one. We want recognizable buoy. Experiences are most meaningful when they build on our past and intended future.
8. Meaning is truth: Truth is another of those multifaceted words that demand a lot of care. Experiences are meaningful if they feel true. But if you expect objective truth, you want more than a feeling, you want the experience to be rationally solid, beyond argument, and based on evidence, with confidence that the meaning you derive will be derivable in all equal situations for all those who experience with equal rationality. Art does not have much place here. If you allow for pragmatic truth, or warranted assertions, meaning emerges when it suits your needs and purposes, and also that of others. Pragmatic truth can be agreed upon based on common experiences, whether or not it was rationally derived. It might simply “ring true,” and that might be good enough. For many, art is expected to possess at least pragmatic truth. Finally, you might be moved more by an inner, intuitive truth, non-rational, not-necessarily-pragmatic, but powerful to you and others who might be open to your expression of it. Some prefer art that is only intuitively true, open to many personal interpretations of meaning.
9. Meaning is intention: We all have intentions, goals, wishes, hopes, and beliefs—states of mind that color which experiences emerge as most meaningful. If an experience leads us toward or supports an intention, it engages us and makes it stand out as meaningful. If you want to climb your first 4000 meter mountain and finally do it, this milestone stands out above other major hikes (which are already aesthetic) because it satisfies your intention. If an experience confirms a belief about yourself or your world, it stands out. If an experience “sets things right,” confirms or justifies a situation—leads to an outcome that seems justified, we might call it meaningful.
10. Meaning is identity: Identity is another way of saying “definition”, so we have come full circle. But here the word indicates perhaps the most important meaning of all—our personally felt identity. Identity is composed of those things we find significant, our values, our relationships, and our beliefs and intentions, so it heavily overlaps the other definitions. When an experience feels deeply personal, engages our agency to help define us and our role in the world, it contributes to building our identity. There is no experience more meaningful. First and foremost, aesthetic experiences are immediate and personal.

If this does not exactly exhaust the exploration, it surely suggests how multifaceted meaning can be, and how pervasive aesthetic experiences might be. Aesthetic experiences might feel meaningful in any of these ways, and likely in more than one of these ways. Our experience of meaning is what makes art and everyday life powerful, more so when some effort is demanded to discern that meaning. When we have to work at it, it is all the more appreciated.

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* Made infamous by US President Bill Clinton in his response to accusations of his infidelity, on the nature of his relationship to the young intern-- “It depends upon what the meaning of the word IS is.” 

Travel, and 3 Problematic Metaphors

It has been said that all the plots of all the stories in the world can be distilled into two general themes: (1) a stranger comes to town, and (2) someone, the hero, goes on a journey. All stories worth telling can be seen as being about how we confront change or new situations, whether these come to us unexpectedly or we find or seek them out by purposefully leaving our comfort zone.

This essay on everyday aesthetics is about the second case, going on a journey, or traveling. However, travel offers a window onto the world that, in the right lighting, when the scene behind it becomes obscure--when the strange becomes virtually unknowable, as it can during travel--also becomes a mirror, such that even these two general themes become blurred. Who is the hero? Who is the stranger?

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Travel can be profound. Unlike some of the topics discussed in this blog on everyday aesthetics, Cooking and Eating, for example, travel is not really something we can or want to do everyday. However, it is highly aesthetic, as I will try to show, even though it is not typically considered in the same company as Art. But travel and Art serve the same purposes--providing meaning, making life special, and more deeply appreciating and participating in life.

Three common reasons offered for why we travel are to “lose oneself,” to “find oneself,” and to “see the world.” We will start with these metaphors, then explore how travel encompasses all of these and more, sharing the same purposes as Art, creating an aesthetic experience.

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Some say we travel to “lose ourselves.” And indeed travel--or tourism if we want to make that distinction--is often marketed as an escape from the monotony or burnout related to the daily routines that have built up around us. Images of inclined, swimsuited, happy people on the beach, relaxing with eyes closed or shaded by sunglasses, sipping cocktails in the open air under clear skies, or strolling aimlessly and slowly through a wilderness or historic city, suggest a comforting sort of nothingness as the blessed alternative to overwhelming obligations. In reality, true burnout requires a cure that is the opposite of nothingness. And travel can be one of those cures when the space it opens is filled with an engaging new somethingness, whether relaxing or exhilarating.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

But “losing oneself” is a misleading metaphor. Whatever we lose, we still follow our enigmatic selves into even the most novel situations (much to our gain). Truly losing even a part of oneself requires significant effort, which is just what some try to avoid when they travel. The travel we often engage in might might help us temporarily lose habits, obligations, and relentlessly familiarity, and this is a good thing--unless they are simply replaced by new habits that are equally limiting or even more debilitating.

On the other hand, this is not to say that there is no power in boredom, which rather than being frustrating might just create enough hunger for stimulation that it results in creativity. The effort to temporarily reject habits and remain open-minded to new options–this can release creative energy that is otherwise blocked by preoccupation. It might also release playful energy that has been submerged under the weight of obligations. Clearly, both of these are healthy outcomes, but travel can do more as well.

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Others might say we travel to “find ourselves,” another good but misleading metaphor. These two reasons sound like opposites, and “finding” looks like the proactive and productive one, while the former seems only passive. But they can also be flip sides of the same experience. Losing your current rendition of self creates the opportunity to find other possibilities.

Truly losing oneself requires a great deal of confidence, a willingness to accept and live with uncertainty, and trust that a new self can be found. It also requires a lot of work, both to give up the status quo and to build a new front to face the world, work that few are willing to undertake. Moving to live and work in a new, distant place is especially hard. There is no return ticket ready to take you back to the familiar routine.

“Finding oneself” can mean a lot of things, including adopting new goals, recognizing new strengths and capabilities, finding new perspectives on life and one’s role in it, or discovering a place (geographical or social) where one feels “at home,” where one can fit in, be understood, and apply one’s strengths. Contrary to a surface reading of this metaphor, finding oneself also involves seeing the people around us in new ways, because much of the self is revealed only in the reflections of others. Travel offers the perfect opportunity for all such changes.

Photo by Maja Kuna-Parrish

Travel is about more than changing our physical environment, although this creates significant impacts in itself. The shift from an urban environment to a wilderness, for example, might create a form of eco-shock if you are not used to it. Being close to trees and water and rocks, and mud and brambles and bugs, or larger and even potentially dangerous wild animals--these can call for new internal resources that force us to respond with new resilience, new selves.

However, those not accustomed to distant travels, where cultural differences are obvious, might not be attuned to the possibility that even short travels are also cultural excursions in which we find people who do things differently from us--and get along just fine doing them that way. Whether across town, or across continents, travel can reveal the breadth of possibilities of human experience. With an open mind, the traveler might begin to question her assumptions. Paul Bowles (1949), in his novel, The Sheltering Sky, offered the distinction that while a tourist “accepts his own civilization without question,” an open-minded traveler “compares it with the others and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.” In other words, a traveler is open to change, open even to a new self, while a tourist might find cultural differences simply another one of the attractions or a necessary bother worth the suntan. There is a scene in Frank Capra’s film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where the young protagonist is planning to leave his small hometown to see the world, and has visited a local luggage shop. He asks for the largest trunk available, holding up his hands to indicate a size equal to his own height and width, assuming the size of the suitcase is proportional to the distance one plans to travel. This is, of course, quite the opposite of those who advocate a “vagabonding” approach to travel, where we leave as much of ourselves behind as possible, making our burden light and leaving space for the new things we are sure to find (for example, see Potts, 2002).

The spirit of travel versus tourism requires “crossing a border,” a significance highlighted by Ryszard Kapusinski (2004/2008) in his illuminating memoir, “Travels with Herodotus.” In his case this was the rarely penetrated border of soviet-ruled Poland, which he crossed more than once as a journalist to find India, Africa, and many other distant lands unreachable by most of his readers. That border, for him and for most of us, is to a great deal also the selves we have erected. “Finding oneself” can happen when crossing a cultural border because this transgression shatters barriers that might bind and blind us.

As someone travels, many parts of selves become available to try on--new ways of speaking, new attitudes, new graciousness, new tolerances, new skills and knowledge. The parts can be taken on incrementally, in a crash course, or not at all, depending on your needs and desires. But you don’t have to lose oneself entirely to find something new and useful. These part-selves can arise from the simplest elements in the new places we explore, both natural and human elements.

When we travel we often allow ourselves to explore the small details of a place, the ones we tend to overlook in daily routines. We might become like children, following the ones that “make the familiar strange,” like when we see something under a microscope for the first time. Following small leads to new experiences, which we have more time and opportunity to do when we travel, can lead to revelations. We might see them only out of the corner of our eye, have them rush past us as we move along like things glanced out the window of a train or moving car. Or they might come smashing us head on, like not knowing how to react in a critical situation such as a major disruption to our plans or difficulty addressing a basic need. The details might accumulate. We might not even recognize the evolving changes in ourselves, like a slow infection. Then one day, we realize we are new.

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Another popular metaphor for why we travel is to “see the world,” to look beyond the limits of oneself. As you might already have guessed, this metaphor is linked to both “losing” and “finding oneself,” because seeing the world is not just seeing new things, but being prepared to see them with new eyes. We all already have a world to see. From our infancy, from the day we are aware, we are already “in the world,” as phenomenologists like Heidegger would put it, partly because we are unavoidably immersed in our social and physical context that so heavily influences how we choose to be (even when we choose to withdrawal from it). Moreover, our consciousness is not really as much self-consciousness, as we are led to believe, as consciousness of the world around us. As phenomenologists might put it, we are aware because we are in the world, and even more so, because we are part of it.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

Yet, as the song goes, “there’s such a lot world to see.” There are all the famous sites we have read about and seen in photos, there are all the peoples we have glimpsed in films and heard speaking in strange tongues. There are the mountains, the rivers, the buildings, the landscapes, the seas, the national parks, the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Few do not want to have the experiences of visiting these. For some, it is a matter of collecting them, like books on a shelf. Other people feel incomplete without them. For them, NOT traveling is like living inside a fenced pasture. They need to jump the fence, cross the border, or they know they will be missing out on the wealth of experience available. And it is not just a matter of seeing things, it is feeling and being new things. Finding new sensations, new selves.

These travel-oriented people may also realize just how finite their lives are, and how special moments can be. As Paul Bowles (1949) put it: “How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” Travel can be a way of refilling the container, extending the finite, and edging toward the limitless.

As the other metaphors imply, travel is also an inward journey. An acid “trip” came to be called that for the journey it can entail. Some disparage travel as a distraction from the most important journeys one can take, the internal ones. As the underrated Beatles song by George Harrison goes (“The Inner Light,” B-side to the more famous Lady Madonna single):

“Without going out of my door
I can know all things of Earth.
Without looking out of my window
I could know the ways of heaven.
The farther one travels
The less one knows”

There’s no place like home. It is not that we do not already have a rich and wonderful world, but that others are also available if we have the urge to look for them.

This talk of losing and finding and seeing the world leads to questions about the substance of a self and a life. Whether a self is defined with the physical boundaries of the skin or the experiential boundaries of a consistent point of view, and whether a life is defined as the sequence of events of an individual self or a process of an evolving interchange between the world and that self, losing oneself is a nonsense proposition. What we really mean when we say we want to lose ourselves is that we want to change how we converse with the world. We want to learn. We want to be enlightened.

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In the end, as useful as the metaphors are, the attraction of travel is better explained in its qualities of aesthetic experience. It often follows the quintessential pattern of artful activity, with a slight twist in that the need, desire, or puzzlement that propels it is often only vaguely defined. In this sense, the conclusion is also open to opportunity--to varying degrees depending on the open-mindedness of the person. We choose to travel based on our trust that all the qualities of an aesthetic experience can be checked off:

• A perceived need or desire: in this case, a desire to explore new things or need to escape from mundane habits, not necessarily a search for specific answers or resolutions. The choice to travel may simply reflect a desire for evidence that raises new questions and mysteries to explore that might force our minds to expand beyond their current narrowness.
• Compelling anticipation: What lies beyond the next corner, the next airport, the next train station, the next mountain pass? What will we find that challenges or rewards our expectations?
• Deep engagement: in the newness of the places visited, historical or natural wonders, challenges faced, people encountered. We need to pay attention or risk losing our way or missing an opportunity.
• Immediate experience: not an experience that comes from media like a TV, computer, tablet, or phone, but directly. A focus on the now, not our past or future, magnified by the influx of sensual details that come with being someplace new.
• A conclusion: a return to a status quo that is somehow no longer the same, a return that can bring the comfort of a rounding out rather than renewed boredom, a return with new eyes, which enhances life by closing a story worth remembering and telling, and, potentially, bringing an internal change that changes everything.

You might notice that all the metaphors for reasons to travel have a place in this pattern of experience. “Losing oneself” is a positive desire when it means opening up to new things or the determination to forget negative experience. Losing oneself, in the form of losing self-consciousness and preoccupation, is also required for deep engagement and immediate experience, for becoming absorbed in the details. “Finding oneself” is a noble goal, a desire that leads to compelling anticipation that new answers and new learning awaits. “Seeing the world” is the opened eye and expanded engagement that arises from anticipation and from attention to the immediate things in the aesthetic experience. Seeing the world means seeing the now that is always there, but frequently lost. It also, of course, means seeing new things that were not available before, but have potential for new impacts—what we came for. It means the power of forgetting and learning how to see in new ways.

What is added to the metaphors is a holistic context, from impulse to resolution. The return is just as important as the journey out, as described in Joseph Cambell’s theories of the power of myth. The return is reaping the reward of the experience. Losing, finding, and seeing combined, and finally taking what we find back to carry on with new energy and insight--this is the powerful thing about travel.

If there is no return but instead a decision to stay, it is no longer travel. It becomes something else, emigration perhaps, or escape, and the metamorphosis is even greater.

(A very nice summary of the metaphors discussed here and more can be found in the essay, Why we travel, by Pico Iyer. Iyer travels the same path, notices different things, and finds different but compatible conclusions.)

Take a walk

Even our first, unspectacular steps are a wondrous experience. Typically, a parent or parents are urging and cheering us on as we make our first journey on two feet, so it can be a social event of high order. And even though we quickly end up grounded again, the arc of the struggled rise to our feet and tenuous traversing even a small distance before falling back to the safety of the horizontal, one of the early dramatic arcs of our lives, gives us a sense of power, with all manner of things beginning to come within reach. The vision of the longer journeys ahead, offering escape from our safe but small worlds, keep us trying until our skills are up to the task.

Photo by karen ybanez

It is difficult to imagine the number of walks I have taken. Perhaps assuming it is slightly less than the number of days I have lived since I was about 1 or 2 years-old is a good starting point. Subtracting for some days of too much desk work, horrendous weather or illness in bed keeps the number realistic, although on many days I there were more than one. By using the term, “a walk,” I am referring to those experiences in which walking itself was a primary motivation or the central activity. This includes not only walks or hikes just for the joy of walking—the sights they enable, the physical exercise, the contemplative state of mind they engender—which we will come back to, but also those with a targeted destination, like school, work, the library or museum, a restaurant or movie theater, where walking may have been either an optional or mandatory mode of travel, but became an event of its own.

For example, I recall my walks to and from school from 1st to 9th grade as distinct events, not just necessary transitions. These short journeys, for a time as much as two kilometers one-way, often in challenging weather, included some momentous mind-wanderings as well. Whether through introspection or conversations with friends, my habits of thought and disposition of character grew during these walks. Because they were repeated so many times, I can almost envision, no, experience them still, with their still-vivid milestones, including the green parks, painted homes larger than my own, and busy streets creating a familiar daily pattern not unlike a favorite song one can listen to every day. These walks were an important part of the texture and rhythm of those days, as well as sources of inspiration.

Photo by hc_hillary

Touring an unfamiliar city on foot is another type of targeted walk--destination or no destination in mind. Becoming acquainted with a place from the ground up, the unevenness or smoothness of its surfaces, the labyrinthine nature or predictability of its paths and street crossings, the encounters with its buildings and artworks, the natives who walk by us with other things on their minds, with purposeful speed or bedraggled slowness. Walking allows us to use all our senses to expand the experience of the tour—the sounds and smells in the air and textures beneath our feet are as much a part of the “there” of a place as the visible structures, paths, and plants. Most will agree that walking a place is the only real way to get to know it.

We typically place limits on what qualifies as a walk. Distance is relative to our speed, which depends on our level of health and abilities, but since time is more directly correlated with effort, it makes the most fitting measure. And like the temporal distortion described in Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the increased experience of gravity we struggle against when climbing a steep hill makes time expand. Walking in a city like Lisbon or on a mountain trail might make shorter walks satisfying. But there are minimums.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

Five minutes is not “a walk,” and 15 minutes does not qualify for most of us. It takes at least twenty minutes to make a walk. This is the average time a person needs to walk a mile, but physical distance is not as important as mental distance. Not coincidentally, twenty minutes is also the recommended time for a session of transcendental meditation, the time it takes to calm the mind and receive the benefits. Many might prefer much longer walks—even hours, to make the experience more impactful—but twenty minutes is enough to allow a walk to come into its own. In this time, the mind can go through a transition from the ongoing noise of internal deliberations, mental replaying of annoyances and outrages, and worries of upcoming demands, and shift to more free-flowing, creative thoughts. It is enough time, with practice, to lose oneself in the moment—where the mind is free to play without the constant claim for our attention from the past and future. The arc of rising to one’s feet, traveling, and then coming to rest again becomes also the luminous, electrical arc of creative connection.

Photo by Edison Tech Center

This is not to discount the physicality of walking. The rhythm of two legs propelling us forward, two arms swinging to keep the balance and provide further momentum. For such a simple activity, walking is invigorating, and can be a critical part of any healthy life. The choice to take regular walks has been shown to be a marker of good health, especially for older people. Unlike other forms of exercise, walking requires no equipment other than comfortable shoes and clothing to suit the weather, no special skills other than a bit of endurance, and no special location in which it needs to be conducted, other than a safe footpath. Even many of those with mobility limitations can engage in a form of walking.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

Despite the long tradition of dualistic thinking, the mind and body are not easily separated, and taking a walk, like all physical activity, engages the whole person. This proposition is more than a philosophical one—medical research also widely recognizes the mind/body connection. Nonetheless, dualism is especially common in applications of aesthetics, which are typically reserved for objects of beauty or stories and melodies. But a close analysis of the attention to form, ritual and the deep engagement people feel when participating in, or even just watching sports and other physical practices like martial arts and yoga throws this assumption out the window. In fact, it is precisely the rhythmic physicality of walking that makes it so compelling and conducive to thought.

Short walks, let’s say 20 minutes to one hour, can be fit into about any day, and can be one of the most important parts of it. A change of scenery, whether to the street or park, is liberating, but even an indoor treadmill brings rewards. Not unlike swinging or rocking, the rhythm of a walk alters our perspective, puts us more inside our body, but also inside the outside world. No longer static, the world moves by us and through us--it becomes animated through our movement. We take it less for granted. We might find new nuances in its objects, perhaps, as Charles Baxter puts it, even handing over our “feeling and thinking to the objects that constitute (our) environment,” attributing sentience or even wisdom to the world’s objects. Perhaps it is the trees and grass or stones that have something to say about existence that we have not been privy to lately. At the same time this worldly connection occurs, the mental focus on our inner world blurs, and we might become more creative or open to new trains of thought. Solutions might appear to us that would otherwise stay hidden, and new perspectives on a situation are almost certain. These changes usually emerge in a predictable pattern-- the period of slow disengagement, a renewing emptiness, and then the glow or brilliant arc of the unpremeditated. But an epiphany is not necessary for a walk to be worthwhile. A subtle change of mood is sufficient.

Photo by Giuseppe Milo

Some feel that twenty minutes is barely scratching the surface, and are only satisfied with a hike. While hikes were a necessity of life in the past for most people, to conduct commerce or for gathering food, water or other critical goods, hikes are these days performed by people determined to escape their too-sedentary lives in urban or suburban areas. Hikes can enhance the common qualities of walks, but also allow other dimensions to emerge. Hikes are set off more clearly as aesthetic experiences.

Several qualities come together to achieve this. First, hikes are usually associated with walks in wilderness areas. Where nature is more raw, unadulterated, we are more likely to find beauty and what we are willing to accept as truths. Nineteenth century Romantic period literature and painting dramatized this, attributing to the wilderness an equivalence to our underlying emotional potential and granting its superiority over human powers. Research has shown that experiencing the outdoors, even in small-scale parks, has very positive physical, mental, and emotional impacts. On the large scale, like wilderness areas, this effect is perhaps magnified. Panoramas of natural environments are almost universally loved, but even the details in a wilderness, unusual to those of us living most of our time in urban habitats, draw our appreciation—a mushroom patch, colorful lichen, wild animals, a rushing stream, towering or thick stands of trees, the expanse of fallen leaves in autumn, and the wider expanse of green leaves in summer.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

The length of hikes and their typical elevation gain make them more physically challenging, raising our heart rate and creating the pleasurable burning sensation in our muscles. Our body is telling us we are achieving something, that we are building stamina to bring to all aspects of our lives. Hikes are usually more destination-oriented than “walks.” Like other aesthetic experiences, we set a challenge to reach a place with a rewarding sight, such as a panorama, waterfall, or other landmark, or we aim to traverse a variety of ecosystems for the cumulative effect these differences have on us. This challenge compels us, offers resistances to overcome, and finally brings physical and emotional rewards when met.

The things that make good Art are also the things that make a good walk. The opportunity for new sights, sounds, and sensations beyond our mundane experience. The ability to make us think in new ways or perceive things differently, including our own bodies. The chance to change ourselves a little, enabling new conclusions, ideas and emotions, as well as physical improvements. And the potential for a good story, or at least a dramatic arc of departure and return.

Is life an unfolding story?

One of the most common and fundamental forms of aesthetic experience is when life takes clear shape as a story with a narrative logic, and not just a series of unrelated events. This story can relate to the pursuit of a goal; following a chosen, imposed, or slowly revealed path; confronting a conflict or adversity; solving a problem or uncovering an unknown; or discovering oneself and those around us. Whether the story is one we impose or discover ourselves or is one imposed by others is a key factor for the potential degree of aesthetic reward. The question is, does a life-story just disguise a more mundane truth--that life is really just episodic, a series of disconnected moments?

Photo by Patrick Parrish

We are surrounded by stories. Parents read and tell stories, friends and family tell stories, we tell stories to others and to ourselves. TV and movies show us stories (nearly 10,000 movies each year are released), and hundreds of thousands of works of written fiction are published each year. Stories come in many other forms as well--in songs, in poetry, and in the openings and asides of good essays and editorials. News is stories--who, what, when, where, how, and tabloid news fills some heads with morality tales of the faulty rich and famous. Good public speakers include stories to help make their points more accessible and less academic. Commercials sell products by telling mini-stories about their benefits. Stories are fundamental to communication, and in fact, to knowing and understanding. We crave stories, and we create them, large or small, each day. But what is behind this craving?

Photo by Parker Knight, Creative Commons 2.0

Even though we intuitively know a story when we are presented one, it is probably useful to have a definition of a story, or more generally, a narrative. Like aesthetic experiences in general, they are more pervasive than you might think. Kenneth Burke (1945) attempted a basic definition of a narrative in his work to create a Grammar of Motives. His premise and conclusion was that a narrative is fundamentally a way of attributing motives to actions, and that the result always contains the following five components, at least implicitly:

An ACT: What took place in thought or deed.
A SCENE: The background of the act, the context or situation in which it occurred.
An AGENT: The person, or protagonist, who performed the act and received its repercussions.
AGENCY: The means or instruments of the act, how it was undertaken.
A PURPOSE: The reason, or reasons, why the act was undertaken.

The act is the WHAT, and the rest help to demonstrate motive. This brilliantly simple analysis of a narrative’s components describes almost any narrative, from the story of why we were late to work yesterday, what we chose to cook for dinner, our choice of careers, how we met our significant other, or the complex interwoven stories to be found within a great novel like Anna Karenina. We can use this five-part analysis to reflect on our own lives to help us understand our motivations to shape our self-image and future actions.

Pioneering cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner, who calls the self “the greatest work of art we ever produce” (Bruner, 2002), describes a similar set of qualities of a story, but his are more closely related to traditional literary theory: (a) a cast of characters who are free agents with (b) expectations about the normal state of the world, confronted by (c) a breach of this expected state. The story continues with (d) their efforts to cope or come to terms with this breach, and (e) an outcome or resolution. Note that Bruner adds the element of conflict, a breach of the normal, that must be overcome. This is the element that elevates a simple account of events to a real story, something worth paying attention to, an aesthetic experience, perhaps. But most interestingly, and most importantly, Bruner adds that the final component is (f) a narrator, a reason for narrating, and a particular perspective on the story. The narration, or the act of telling a story, is another layer of motive on top of the story itself, and can in fact can contain its own story: Why was the story told? What is the context of the telling? Who it telling it? How is the telling constructed? Given this final quality in particular, we are compelled to ask why we tell the stories in our lives to ourselves and those around us.

Assuming we agree that we all do tell stories about our lives, the question remains whether is this a good thing. Is life a naturally a story, or is this quality artificial, perhaps even detrimental to our ability to experience life for what it truly is? Is viewing life as a story simply a form of lying, hiding from the truth, or wishful thinking? Can a storied life bind us, make us prisoners of it? Can it set us up for disappointment when the bar it sets is too high for the constraints of our situations or abilities? The answer to these questions can on occasion be a definite Yes. How detrimental a life story can be depends on our active engagement in the process of telling it (accepting that we are, in fact, Bruner’s narrator when it comes to our own stories). It depends on our flexibility in allowing ourselves to grow with the unfolding story rather than remain closed-minded, and our willingness to actively reshape the story components while it also unfolds on its own.

Bad outcomes can result from sticking to a story. Atrocities are conducted based on the self-convincing stories that justify them. Lives can be ruined due to obsessive adherence to dangerous self-stories. Bruner outlines the famous and particular sad story of Christopher McCandless, the 23-year-old who died of starvation in the Alaska wilderness (see the book and film, Into the Wild) after convincing himself that he should live in complete self-sufficiency away from the world of people. His inspiration was a story he derived from the writings of American author Henry David Thoreau, whose call to “simplify, simplify” led him to isolate himself to the edge of Walden Pond, a full 2.6 kilometers from the town of Concord, Massachusetts--far enough to inspire an important philosophical book, but not self-destructive by any means. Much more common negative self-stories are those of victimization, low self-worth, or an unbreakable streak of bad luck. The success many achieve by practicing meditation stems from its goal to help us let go of our stories, if even for only 20 minutes at a time, as a way to relax and re-energize, and release new creative energy that might otherwise remain locked up in a fruitless self-story.

However, a life-story can be extremely positive too. It can be the driver behind our goals and hard work, our rewarding relationships, our connections to life, society, and nature. The narrative basis of ethics has been discussed by both Bruner (2002) and John Dewey (Fesmire, 2003). Bruner points out the intertwined nature of stories and law, the prevalence of stories about courtroom drama, and how stories are the basis for legal decisions, not just coded laws, because for each potential infraction a motive must be assigned. Dewey spoke our use of “dramatic rehearsal,” how we construct a story of potential outcomes to help us make moral decisions (or perhaps any decision for that matter). Stories are serious business. They are not just for entertainment.

By Unknown -
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/1905-01-01/ed-1/seq-4/
(Los Angeles Herald), Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36561822

As for the question posed in the title of this post, Is life an unfolding story?, most of those who have ponder it have concluded positively that our fundamental experience of life is founded in narrative. Some have even proposed that the near universal grammar of our languages, with their subject-verb-object structures, and the myriad ways of modifying those with adjective and adverb phrases, show that we think in narrative terms. Story is an important way of knowing, not just a pleasant veneer we impose. As Bruner (2004) puts it, “There is no such thing as life itself.” We naturally discern a narrative structure in the events we experience, attribute motives, and take actions based on those motives. Humans seem particularly good at this, but the famous four-year Gombe Chimpanzee War suggests that apes also maintain a historical, narrative view of their experience, and act on it.

This life story seems to have two levels (Breen & McLean, 2017). One is a generalized, master narrative that is culturally based, and which exists as a standard to which we measure the value of our own lives. There are many of these master narratives we might relate to--one about redemption for a past misdeed, or one regarding rising from rags to riches, for example. The personal narrative is the second level, and it is based on our lived experience interpreted through or in opposition to the master narrative. The master narratives can be seen as forming the basis of fictional genres as well. How much agency we assert in confronting master narratives is a good part of how well we use our aesthetic potential. Do we follow blindly, or do we take personal responsibility for composing a meaningful story of our own?

However, some have claimed that life as a story is not just a dangerous idea, but also incorrect. Strawson (2004) argued that life is in fact episodic, and that its narrative qualities are something that we (some more than others) impose on it. After all, a story does not account for the little bits of life that take up so much of our time--waiting for the train, having your teeth cleaned, filing taxes, washing the dishes. How can one feel part of a story while enduring these? So perhaps a story is just a facade imposed on the flow of mundane occurrences and habitual actions.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

A life without a story is hard to imagine, if not frightening. Freeman (2017) describes his mother’s decline due to Alzheimer's disease, and the revealing stages of its effects. At first, the confusion caused by her growing inability to connect events was terribly frustrating. Her own self-story was becoming disassembled, no longer was she the independent, self-sufficient person she had been (she could no longer live up to the master narrative). Then, as the disease progressed, she became more peacefully accepting of the moment, which was all she had. Freeman even recounts his feeling of envy in her ability to enjoy simple pleasures, the sights and sounds around her, without the clutter of needs to think about. Finally, however, her state collapsed into one of near constant terror. She was unable to understand where she was or why. Not only was the master narrative gone, but any degree of personal narrative had become impossible. The aesthetic rewards of creating a life story appear to be not only rewards, but necessary to our being.
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Breen, A.V. & McLean, K. C., 2017. The intersection of personal and master narratives. In Schiff, B., McKim, A.E., and Patron.S. (Eds), Life and narrative: The risks and responsibilities of storying experience. Oxford University Press.

Bruner, J. (2002) Making stories: Law, literature, life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bruner, J. (2004) Life as narrative. Social Research, 71(3), 691-710. (Originally published in 1987.)

Burke, K. (1945/1969) A grammar of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fesmire, S. (2003) John Dewey and Moral Imagination. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Freeman, M. (2017) Narrative at the limits (Or: What is “life” really like?). In Schiff, B., McKim, A.E., and Patron.S. (Eds), Life and narrative: The risks and responsibilities of storying experience. Oxford University Press.

Ten reasons for examining everyday aesthetics

Photo by Bruce Muller 

Life is filled with opportunities, as well as their accompanying risks, uncertainties, and inevitable pitfalls. If we do not accept them, life is not worth living. We can jump in and make life an adventure, risking the challenge of overcoming setbacks or potential failure, or we can step back and live a safe and anaesthetic life. The problem is, anaesthesia brings the deepest pitfall of all, an apathy that swallows opportunity and breeds monotony.

At times the choices we make, even when they at first seem good and rewarding, lead to situations that dissipate our spirit. They can leave us feeling burned out--an idiom that recalls the hollowness of a charred and empty home, with only the walls and open window frames remaining, vulnerable to the wind and whatever it brings. Investment in life has this risk if we are not equipped with the required resilience.

Burnout can result from many things: endless demands, a pace that leaves no time for thoughtful reaction, lack of appreciation for our efforts, unnecessary roadblocks and detours, effort without challenge, and meaningless or futile tasks. These situations can seem as inescapable as monotony, perhaps leading us to seek anaesthesia in the many addictive forms available--chemical alteration, excessive consumption, media overload, closed-minded beliefs for the sake of belonging, or mindless routine.

Photo by cmiper, copyright Creative Commons

This is where art and everyday aesthetics can help.

The opposite of anaesthesia, aesthetic experiences help us avoid and build resilience against burnout and monotony. They offer an outlet for our expressive energy and an infusion of meaning. Aesthetics is often thought of as applying to objects or events that we engage with just for pleasure, not needful and productive activities. But it is more useful, and more cohesive, to think of aesthetics as describing those particularly engaging and rewarding types of experience that can emerge in almost any realm-- those that are optional and primarily pleasurable, or those absolutely necessary. (For a larger discussion, see the post, What makes an experience aesthetic?) Art is a special case--a refinement of the everyday. As explored in the post, The Purpose of Art, some of the key values of art that have been identified by philosophers over the centuries relate to its potential for therapeutic cleansing, healing, celebrating, distracting, instructional, or transcendent qualities. These values relate to everyday aesthetic experiences as well.

Engaging in an activity as simple as a vigorous walk, tending the garden, creating a photo album, or preparing a special dinner can bring meaning lost during the more mundane efforts of the day. Taking an extended trip to an exotic destination can provide a lifetime of resilience through the memories gained and things learned. Completing a marathon that was long trained-for can bring a new sense of power and the will to do more with life. Learning to play a musical instrument, writing a book or completing a PhD can do the same. These are special not just for the final products, but for the experience as a whole, from initial frustration, to learning, to challenge, and to culmination.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

Resilience to burn out comes not by relaxing and dropping out, but by going through experiences that engage us, challenge us, and push back, but also finally give back and reward us with the realization that we can have an effect on our lives and on the world. Art is evidence of that need. Art is the distillation of life experiences, and experiences in and of themselves, helping us to see the aesthetic potential around us. We seek art in its many forms for the wide variety of reasons already mentioned (cleansing, healing, celebrating, distracting, learning, transcending), and we seek everyday aesthetic experiences for exactly the same reasons. This blog is devoted to short essays demonstrating how everyday experiences can do this.

This rest of this post will expand on the reasons for this line of study, which is currently rising in popularity among philosophers. For example, see Practicing Pragmatist Aesthetics (Malecki, Ed., 2014) and Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Shusterman, 2000). But the discussion is wasted if it stays within the discourse of philosophers. It is a useful topic for all of us.

Why bother examining the aesthetics of everyday life? Why not just enjoy them without trying to dissect or classify them? I will offer a few reasons below.

1. Increased acceptance: Art is both idealized and berated for being so idealized. The same is true for many everyday aesthetic activities like team sports, gourmet cooking, extreme sports, and others. Those who aren’t interested do not understand how others might be so enthusiastic about activities that they feel are pretentious, shallow, or reckless. So, one reason to examine these phenomena together is to embrace the varieties of aesthetic experience, to know that aesthetics is not an elitist concern, but something we all engage in everyday, each in our own ways. It is OK to be disinterested in some forms, but we should realize that the reason we enjoy our own chosen experiences is fundamentally the same reason others enjoy theirs. All should be admired as human expressions arising from the same needs.
2. More engagement: Understanding and accepting the similar foundations of aesthetic experiences might encourage us to engage in more of these life-enhancing activities. We might see more opportunities, and these might bring us more power to affect our lives in positive ways to resist burnout, even bringing increased happiness by avoiding pitfalls or helping us climb out of them more easily.
3. New sensitivities: Routine binds us, but aesthetic experiences open our doors of perception. They ask us to see with new eyes, listen with new ears, taste and touch with new sensitivity. They expand the abilities of our senses, allowing us to notice things we would otherwise miss. They help us find beauty where we might otherwise miss it. Conscious practice of aesthetic activities can expand the powers of our senses. Logic and analytical understanding are particularly valued in most societies today, but aesthetic experience, while often built upon these, also reveals that sensory experience is also an important source of knowledge on its own (Baumgarten). This expansion of knowledge into the sensory realm helps us to bring more to bear.
4. Deeper learning: Aesthetic experiences are also learning experiences. They teach us about the world through deeper examination of its many aspects, including what we can offer to it. They build knowledge about the world through greater exposure, and can bring insights that build perspective on our roles in the world. They help us to grow, and to develop the skills to be more resilient in life. The provide new strategies to give and receive more.
5. Expanding viewpoints: Life is full of non-obvious qualities that stay that way due to our habits of compartmentalizing, rather than synthesizing. Exploring everyday aesthetics is a synthesis that can bring new qualities to light by exercising our synthesis capabilities.
6. Connection to others: Even though aesthetic experience is in some perspectives personal, we all share in having them. The experiences we engage in are more often than not collective ones--things done in teams, groups, or with partners, or as part of an audience. Connecting with others with similar interests helps us to be more connected to life in general, and to grow from what we learn from one another.
7. Connection to our environments: Moreover, aesthetic experiences connect us to the natural and built environment as well. One of their properties is developing the power to interact in our environments--to build, climb, hike, travel, throw, fly, represent, qualify, quantify, collect, explain, etc. They help us appreciate our surroundings for what they can offer, and give life new meaning in these ways as well.
8. Curiosity: Understanding brings power. Understanding is a fundamental path to, or at times synonymous with, finding meaning. Any knowledge is empowering, but more so when it challenges our status quo. Knowledge of everyday aesthetics, which tells us about the common source of art and so many everyday activities, brings an especially deep cutting knowledge about life. The pursuit of a deeper understanding of this pervasive aspect of human experience is in itself, like all other ventures into the unknown or not-well-understood, an aesthetic experience.
9. Appreciation of art: Art surrounds us, and it can be empowering to know that art enhances experience, not by lifting us above or distracting us everyday life (although it can be used this way), but by distilling life to uncover its essences. In the end, art is not an escape, but a confrontation of life. It can bring a particularly powerful aesthetic experience.
10. Designing experiences for others: The final reason is perhaps the most important for many of us. Aesthetic experience brings change, and those engaged in professions that aim to change others, help them grow, overcome personal challenges, make decisions, and overcome oppressive circumstances, can use a knowledge of aesthetic experience to ensure that happens. Whether you are in marketing; a teacher, trainer, coach, or mentor; a manager, politician, or social activist; a therapist, a preacher, … a parent, … or an artist, you have the potential to use a knowledge of aesthetic experience to support your work.

A nice, round, ten reasons. Enough to keep us going in the exploration.

John Muir, the famous naturalist, has been quoted as saying that “when one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” The exploration of aesthetic experiences, a natural phenomenon certainly, has this potential. Once we know what we are looking for, we see how pervasive aesthetic experiences actually are. Today during my hike, a large and dripping wet dog ran up to me with a large stick in his mouth, his lips pulled back into a grin. He had just been retrieving thrown sticks from the Versoix River and was proud of his accomplishments, so I congratulated him with a pat on his head. As I walked on up the trail, I found a short stick on the ground similar to the one the dog was carrying. I picked it up and threw it as far as I could up the trail, for no immediately apparent reason.

What makes an experience aesthetic?

All the time we are awake life is marked by experience. The world gives us sensations and situations to respond to, we react, and the world reacts back. This ongoing transaction fills our days.

But some experiences are more rewarding than others. Experiences tend to run the spectrum from boring and barely worth our attention—to scattered, incomplete and unsatisfying—to routine (whether mindless routine or pleasantly familiar routine)—to busy and focused (with various levels of challenge and satisfaction)—to those that are the most engaging, even radiating with meaning and purpose, lifting you up, making you feel truly alive. These are the kind you want to keep with you.

The experiences filled with meaning are the ones we can refer to as aesthetic. These set the bar. In fact, they inspire the practice of art (which, fundamentally, is our way of distilling experience), inspire people to strive for the highest achievements in all domains, and keep us going through the routine, hard work, or boredom we inevitably experience along the way. Just knowing aesthetic experiences are out there to be had can be inspiration enough to resisting slipping into the doldrums.

The connection of engaging everyday experiences to art and aesthetics was made most famously by philosopher John Dewey in his 1934 work, Art as Experience. There, he explored the question of the source of art in human behavior, and saw it as originating in everyday experience, ranging from “how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the on-looking crowd; . . . the delight of the housewife in tending to her plants . . .; the zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and crumbling coals.”

Photo by Lukas Riebling

What can these everyday experiences have in common with the David of Michelangelo, Picasso’s Guernica, Debussy’s Preludes, Malick’s Days of Heaven, or Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina? The answer has to do with a few critical qualities of experiences that drive us toward the reward of meaningful engagement.

Including the encounters with works of art that we love, but definitely not restricted to these, aesthetic experiences have a coherence—a beginning, middle, and end—that sets them apart from the normal flow of experience. This begins with an intention based on (a) a need, desire, tension, or puzzlement that stimulates attention, an attention that is further driven by (b) the anticipation of a meaningful outcome that makes the experience compelling—winning the game, a garden full of flowers, a warm fire. These experiences are also colored by (c) deep engagement and concern for (d) immediate actions and sensual details, and not just thoughts about reasons and purposes, which may in fact be temporarily forgotten, like time itself. Finally, unlike much of our experience, which can feel incomplete or lacking in some way, an aesthetic experience includes (e) a conclusion or consummation, a resolution that ties all the moments of the experience together--gives it coherence--and makes the effort (which often includes hard work) worth it. Moreover, the resolution often feels profoundly meaningful. Nearly all good narratives have such a pattern, and non-narrative art can create the same experience within us, but many everyday experiences show this pattern as well.

Each of these qualities require more unpacking and exploration, as does the overall quality of coherence, and might be the subject of future posts. But for now, let’s conclude by examining a couple experiences to show how one is aesthetic, and one is definitely not, and also look at the contributing factors.

It would be easy to choose two highly contrasting situations, like climbing a mountain and washing windows, for example, but let’s choose very similar situations in an environment where where experiences tend to exhibit a wide range of aesthetic engagement—the workplace. The situations described below are fictitious, and any resemblance to real situations, current or past, is purely coincidental.

1.
You are asked to take on a new work assignment. You have no lack of work, so at first you wince at the request. But you trust the person asking for it (manager or client, take your pick), know that the assignment is not a whim, and as you study the details, you agree it has value and will bring multiple benefits. You also see some interesting challenges that will offer you an opportunity to learn new things, so you say yes. Your first task is to decide on the approach you will take, which will require buy-in by the stakeholders. Through careful examination of the goals, the stakeholder needs, the constraints, and similar assignments taken on by colleagues, you are able to develop both a good plan and a good argument for it. The buy-in is achieved after a series of challenges that force you to defend the approach. As you begin to implement the plan, you become convinced that the outcome would be improved if you adapt your approach, and this creative problem solving is enjoyable enough to compel you to work late many nights. When you deliver the final result, it is well received, but not without some additional modifications. You think back to when you were first given the assignment and how it has evolved, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment to know that you were able to see it through this evolution. You also look forward to seeing how what you learned during the project will help you in future efforts, and perhaps win you additional interesting and challenging assignments.

I hope this scenario was not too unfamiliar, but certainly most workplace experiences don’t reach this level. Let’s rewind and look at the other end of the spectrum.

2.
You are asked to take on a new work assignment. You have no lack of work, and so you wince at the request. The person asking you (manager or client, take your pick) has a reputation for quickly responding to upper management requests with half-baked ideas for the sake of quick compliance. You feel that this might be one of those black-hole assignments, one that will take excessive time and energy, but give back little and have little chance of success. You are told the plan and given little leverage to adapt it with your own ideas, so you cannot help but feel a lack of conviction when you have to present it to the stakeholders. Predictably, it is shot full of holes by the skeptics who offer no alternatives, and equally so by supporters who have completely different (and better) ideas that might have more impact. Trying to please everyone, you allow the plan to become a mélange that will hopefully address everyone’s input. Before the plan can be implemented, management stalls, unable to see how it could address their original goals, which have changed anyway. No one cancels it, but no one pushes for it either, and so it withers away and is eventually forgotten. You move on to hopefully better projects.

I suspect we have all had such experiences in our work, unfortunately. Aesthetic experiences are hard to come by, especially when critical contributing factors are lacking. What are these factors?

Some have to do with things that are mostly outside our control, the Situational qualities, and some have to do with the ones we bring to the experience, our Individual qualities. The diagram below depicts a rather good day/week/month without boredom or scattered activity, and lists the qualities that make it good. But note that, as novelists since modernist times have shown us, experience is not really a timeline, and aesthetic experiences are not just moments we can mark in time. Sometimes only with time does it dawn on us how meaningful an experience has become, perhaps even long after the events have concluded.

From Parrish, Wilson, and Dunlap (2010)

Qualities of Situations

Immediacy. Some situations absorb us their details--not just sights and sounds to perceive, but also ideas to comprehend, emotions to feel, and tasks to accomplish. Immediacy takes our focus away from ourselves and to the world itself.

Malleability. Some experiences allow give and take–the opportunity for us to color the experience, to shape it with the tools we bring to it, and to contribute to its unfolding. The most powerful situations are provisional, with the final meaning and outcomes to be determined at least partly by us.

Compellingess. A compelling situation contains intrigue and uncertainty. It makes us curious about what happens or can happen next. We are reluctant to let it go.

Resonance. Some experiences both connect to our present lives and leave a residue of thoughts and feelings that have an impact on future experiences. Sometimes they recast the past with new understanding. Aesthetic experiences create reverberant echoes in all directions.

Coherence. When life moves from one thing to another without connection, the disjointedness is unraveling. Coherence, on the other hand, is almost synonymous with meaning, and it is most powerful if it emerges when we are following through on an intention. In fact, the most rewarding kind of coherence is one that is not just given--like an easily perceived symmetry, but one that requires a struggle before being revealed.

Qualities of Individuals

Intent. Each of us has individual goals and interests, as well as unique attitudes, values, hopes, beliefs, likes, dislikes, and assumptions about our role in the world. All of these are subsumed by the concept of intent by phenomenologists like Husserl (1982/1999). While our intentions exist in any case, when we are aware of and honest about our intentionality, we are also more open to the influence of experience and more able to gain from it. This is perhaps especially when it challenges us.

Presence. As Woody Allen aptly put it, 80 percent of success is showing up. I agree, but to achieve an experience that reaches aesthetic proportions we need something beyond physical and mental presence. The other “twenty percent” includes empathy and being genuine, which are a little bit harder to achieve. These three types of presence are called being-there, being-with, and being-one’s-self by philosopher Martin Heidegger (1962). Presence makes us more responsible, able to draw on our pasts and utilize our will to imagine and change our future.

Openness. In American politics, openness is called being a flip-flopper, as if it is shameful to admit you can still learn from experience. Aesthetic experiences, if we want them, demand an openness to submit to the challenges offered and draw upon the opportunities of the situation and the perspectives and support of others to learn new things. This is not flip-flopping, this is integrity.

Trust. To fully engage in a situation, we need to trust that it has something to offer. This includes faith that positive outcomes can occur – along with the willingness to suspend disbelief when these outcomes are in doubt – and forgiveness when the experience falls short of expectations, knowing that with effort, it can be turned around.

This list of aesthetic-potential qualities is probably not exhaustive, and the qualities are certainly not independent of each other. But hopefully they are compelling and coherent enough to keep this line of inquiry going, which is all that is needed. Do your favorite works of art have these qualities? When you enjoy them, do you bring your individual qualities to the experience? Does your work ever rise to this level?

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Portions of this post are based on Learning Experience as Transaction: A Framework for Instructional Design (Parrish, Wilson, and Dunlap, 2010)

Cooking and Eating

Last night, my wife was going to arrive home late for dinner due to her French class. That could have been an excuse for preparing a simple snack or leftovers, but we almost always choose to avoid that kind of eating after a long work day because it makes us feel a little depressed, to be honest. Like many people, we enjoy taking time to cook, to prepare something significant, perhaps simple, but still elegant, even when time is not in our favor. In some way, the day just does not feel complete without it. On weekend nights, with more time, even if it never seems to be a luxurious amount, the options are wide open, and on occasion we might spend two hours or more in preparation of something more special.

So I prepared a meal last night anyway, but I needed to keep it light since we would be eating so late. I tried something common to many people, Baba Ghanoush (that wonderful paté common in Middle Eastern cuisine), but which I not have prepared more than a couple times, so the novelty was motivation. It is also somewhat simple, but the process takes time and attention. I peel and roast 2 small eggplants (or aubergine as they are known here in Geneva), drenched in extra virgin olive oil and salted, to begin. While the eggplants relax and enrich their flavor in the oven, with only minimal attention required to turn them periodically, it is time to prepare the additional ingredients. Skipping the traditional tahini, which I did not have, I dice capers and spring onions (or szypior, as Maja is used to naming them in Polish) to add some bite. The process of chopping and dicing is quite enjoyable once one gets comfortable with the knife, in fact. The focus and skill required to avoid injuring the fingers and making even cuts is worth developing. The rest of the dish was roasted garlic (we prefer this over raw garlic), fresh lemon juice, parsley and cumin powder (fresh ground in this case). After the eggplant is soft, I blend all these things together in a food processor until it is very smooth, heavier than whipped cream, but similar. Then I just have to prepare a simple side salad and slice some bread.

Photo by young shanahan, copyright Creative Commons

One of the enjoyable and rewarding things about cooking is the potential for endless variation and creative opportunities, as well as the pleasure of using the materials at hand efficiently and to interesting effect. Even one ingredient substituted, or a vegetable sliced thinner or thicker, might have a noticeable effect on the final dish. When trying a new dish, we on occasion use a recipe religiously, but that is rare. Personalization is a key to getting the full enjoyment out of the experience.

We like going out to restaurants for a different kind experience, but we sometimes come away feeling we can do better. Maybe this is true, but maybe it is also just that we miss the process of preparation. After a long day of email communication, meetings, drafting documents and plans, and the inevitable general bureaucratic steps (and crevasses) required to work within the international organizations we are part of, cooking is almost a form of meditation.

It was a warm night, so we ate on the balcony, overlooking the lake, with candles, nice place settings, the sound of soft waves hitting the rocks, and also the background noise we have learned to overlook, the parade of evening planes from countries all over the world heading for the Geneva Airport to land. We see an Emirates plane, and wonder if they ate Baba Ghanoush during their journey as well, and whether it was as good as ours.

The qualities of cooking mentioned above--infinite creative options, requisite dexterity, a focus on process, a body of jargon, specialized tools, visceral enjoyment of the final product--surely qualify cooking as a high craft. And experts chefs are given the recognition that high level craftsman deserve. But does food deserve to be called an artform?

 As mentioned in a previous post, I don’t feel this question is profitable. It leads to many strange arguments. One is that the fact that food is ephemeral makes it unlike most art forms. But isn’t this also true of musical and dance performances? And many visual arts as well, such as Tibetan sand paintings and the outdoor natural arts of Andy Goldsworthy. Another is that food is consumable, for sustenance and not pure enjoyment, so it lacks the “enjoyment for its own sake” that other arts demonstrate. But then there is architecture, and the point that enjoyment is also a useful purpose. Food, and its preparation, offers the opportunity for aesthetic experience, and this is the point, not whether we can call it art. We can anticipate its pleasures, we can become highly engaged in the processes of preparation and eating, it can generate curiosity due to its variety, it is immediately experienced and not just something for intellectual thought, and it can bring about a profound feeling of closure, one felt even in the body as the stomach is satisfied. It is these things that make cooking and eating aesthetic.

Preparing food for oneself and for family and friends provides several levels of nourishment. First is the aesthetic pleasure of crafting a good meal. Second is the physical nourishment of the meal, but also, thirdly, its aesthetic appreciation when eaten. And finally, there is the joy in sharing what one has prepared with others.