This is an expanded comment I made on the article
On the Scale of Meaning
Journal Entry: January 31, 2026
I often hear people say that everything means something. When we notice a synchronicity, or a strange coincidence, or a pattern that seems unlikely, we feel the tug of significance. We sense some kind of alignment, some hidden intelligence at play. But the meaning that is moving through the world rarely fits inside the small shapes we try to give it.
As humans we carry the habit of shrinking the universe down to a familiar size. We look at events and assume they should make sense to us on a human scale. We try to translate the world into a language we already understand. This is a reflex of the species. We humanize the unknown. We project our stories outward. It is how we make the world feel close enough to hold.
Yet meaning often moves far beyond the limits of our noticing. The spectrum of what is happening at any given moment is enormous. We take in only a thin slice of it and often spend that thin slice circling inside our own preoccupations. It is as if the world is playing a symphony and we are hearing two or three notes, sometimes out of tune or out of context, sometimes drowned out by our own inner commotion.
Synchronicities remind us of the wider field. They startle us into awareness. They pierce the bubble of self-absorption and let a little more of the world in. They hint at patterns that stretch across scales we do not inhabit and timescales that reach beyond the horizons of our own lives. When something aligns in a way that feels meaningful, we often assume the message is meant for us. Yet the deeper truth may be that we have brushed against a current that was flowing long before we arrived.
Meaning is not a spotlight aimed at the individual. Meaning is a landscape. It unfolds across vast relationships. It circulates through systems and histories and invisible exchanges that we only glimpse in passing. We do not stand at the center of these movements. We stand inside them, like a leaf stirred by a passing wind.
To live with synchronicity is to cultivate humility. To understand that our interpretations are provisional. It invites us to listen more carefully, to slow down, to create an inner quiet so the subtle signals can surface. When something surprising happens, or when two events echo each other in an uncanny way, we can meet it without rushing to turn it into a personal narrative. We can simply acknowledge that we touched a larger pattern, one that continues with or without our notice or comprehension.
Meaning is not withholding itself from us. We are simply learning how to widen the aperture. Our attention is a narrow beam. The world is a vast field of signals. When we soften our preoccupations and widen our gaze the field becomes a little more visible. We begin to sense the deeper rhythms, the background pulse, the subtle choreography of things.
Everything means something, yet the meaning is rarely about our individual story. It is about the immense processes we are participating in. The more we open to that scale, the more we realize how much has always been happening around us. And the more we learn to listen, the more we hear its speech and sense its poetry.
The last 2 sentences really speak loudly for me. I can't demand meaning no matter how much I press for it. So, I'll try to be patient and sit in the studio and keep my eyes and heart opened and sometimes something will come to me after an amount of time but if I even try to push it a teeny bit, I lose it. I have to leave it alone yet be open to it arriving on its own terms/timing. It's kind of like holding ones breath as a butterfly lands on your arm and you don't want it to leave so you be still, even trying to slow down your heart rate, and be present to this extraordinary happening.