This week in the life of a doctoral student, I was assigned the book, Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson. It is a book of over 500 pages of small print, including more notes and citation than I had time to count. The sub title of the book is “The Architecture of Belief”. The idea that we could uncover an understanding on how we come to acquire our understanding of meaning and our beliefs seems simple enough until you pick up this book.<\/p>\n
Life Is Complex<\/strong><\/p>\n As I was ordering book at the start of the semester this one peaked my interest as I love to explore the psychology and sociology of the complexities of life. I have spent the last several months trying to deepen my understanding around humanity, dignity and empathy. Then life through a curve ball my way…<\/p>\n Before I was able to pick up this book and explore the deep, complex reasoning and researched aimed at understanding our complexities as humans, I received a frantic phone call from a family member that a 19 year old family member had attempted suicide and was being rushed to the ER. To say my mind began spinning with questions, desperation, fear, sadness, and most of all in this situation the WHY. Seeking the meaning of all this has spun in my mind all week.<\/p>\n This news compounded on other family crisis: my car broke down and we need it to travel for Thanksgiving, my mother fell and broke her collarbone, my mother in law was admitted to the hospital in need of a bone marrow transplant, my husband had medical tests, my daughter got the lead in the school play, my son is struggling with making friends, and our exchange student is in culture shock and homesick… All in a matter of 14 days! Plus I have 2.5 months left to finish my doctoral research project.<\/p>\n In all this complexity, in all this weight to carry… what is the meaning of it all? Where do my beliefs stand in all of this? As a Christian I might claim this to be a moment of testing like Job. In my traumatized human heart, I might feel that the world is out to get me, or question “what am I doing wrong?”, “where is God in all of this?”, \u00a0in all of this I am at the core seeking meaning.<\/p>\n In Peterson’s book I found myself frustrated by the wordy and intellectual approach to describing things when what I needed in this moment was simple understanding, meaning making of all these things that are crushing me.<\/p>\n Perspective in Chaos<\/strong><\/p>\n Peterson writes, “The meaning we attribute to objects or situations is not stable.” He goes on to state, “The meaning of things depends to a profound and ultimately undeterminable degree upon the relationship of those things to the goal we currently have in mind. Meaning shifts when goals change.” (1)<\/p>\n So, as my life becomes engulfed in chaos, surrounded by grief and fear, it would be reasonable to say that my goals have changed that what has meaning changes. As the goals change to one of survival mode in the midst of chaos the meaning of things the definition of importance all change as well.<\/p>\n Peterson uses in his book an example of concentration camps. This example is heavy and one that brings forward our extreme failures as humans. I recently visited a concentration camp while spending time in Germany and found it to stir inside me a deep desire to make meaning, to understand how humans could get to this point. The bitterness of survival still radiated from the dirt. The graphic stories of the living conditions don’t even begin to tell the story of how desperate being there was. What was important and what made sense to those imprisoned was radically different than for others around the world. Their goals changed and so too did their understanding of what had meaning, what was important, and what they were willing to do to survive.<\/p>\n Goals Change<\/strong><\/p>\n When we are faced with both challenge and success our goals are likely to shift and those the meaning we seek shifts as well. Mr research seeks to address what happens to leaders when they are faced with the trauma of leadership. These moments change a leaders goals. Often a visionary leader will become more risk adverse and shift to survival mode. When a leader is unable to take risk or invest in creativity they become stuck in this pattern of survival and may even loose sight of any or all the goals they had. The goals change, get lost, or loose value. In my research I have been exploring how using play can begin to help leaders heal from the trauma of leadership and expense a renewal within themselves that can again inspire their creativity and ability to dream, thus changing their goals once again.<\/p>\n In Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n Life is messy and hard, evil in the word exists, and even wordy, intellectual, philosophy books about meaning can have meaningful insight into how we as humans engage in meaning making in the midst of the mess.<\/p>\n [1] Jordan B. Peterson,\u00a0Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief<\/em> (New York, NY: Routledge, 1999), xiv. (p. 33)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week in the life of a doctoral student, I was assigned the book, Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson. It is a book of over 500 pages of small print, including more notes and citation than I had time to count. The sub title of the book is “The Architecture of Belief”. 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