Struggles Toward Meaning

Have you always, or nearly always, worked at understanding what is happening? Or did happen? Or, what a word means, especially in the context of its sentence?

I have. All my life.

If someone said something – in person, group or on the radio, TV or movie – and mumbled it, I wondered what they said. What I missed. Was it important? Did it help make sense of the current action? “What did he say?” That was a frequent question of mine to others surrounding me. I’m sure it was more irritating to them than I, but being at a loss for missing pieces, I was unnerved by not knowing.

This personal characteristic has made me annoying and inquisitive. I plainly ask questions. I piece the answers into my puzzles and hopefully gain understanding of each of them. My test has always been, if I can easily explain the complexity to someone else, then I know and understand what I am speaking about. Or writing. 

The logic, you see, takes over the communication transaction. It becomes a simple matter of adding facts together to make sense of things. I think this is what drives most reporters. They simply have to have all the pieces and facts together, or else they cannot write clearly about the item. Sensing missing pieces, the reporter simply turns into a detective. This basic trait that makes a reporter an investigative reporter. These are the people who sense that a lot of public relations work is merely untruths attempting to place a good face on something. Politicians commonly resort to such things.

As reporters scan working stories, they become aware of what is not presently known. They keep asking questions about the meaning of something. Is this important? If yes, why? If no, why are we spending time on it?

The best stories are ones emerging from mystery and misleading mistruths. The reporter does well pulling the item together accurately. A larger meaning, however, is commonly present. Even if the news item is now factual and fully explained, what value has it to our daily living? Is there something else embedded in the story that makes it much more important? Why, indeed, was so much time spent distracting the public from understanding the issue?

“I wonder why they said this, or what their motivation was?” This is a critical question for the serious reader and/or reporter. Indeed, how much history do we understand that has changed from its earliest reports? As we know and understand more about the early story, we learn more of the who, what and why. We become more aware of the story’s larger meaning. This is why history appears to be rewritten from time to time.

Much of life is this. Time helps us deal with it. Not always successful, but we toil at understanding things better.

The half-truths and outright lies of political campaigns make them odious. Even good candidates fall into this swamp. I wish we could focus on issues and not personalities. Afterall, the personality is usually far more apparent than the truth of the issues discussed. That alone is another aspect of the personality involved.

Best we pay attention to facts. We will know the truth if we stay focused.

January 10, 2024

 



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