Hi. Your mind is a liar.
Ok, that's a little harsh.
Your mind is a storyteller. A convincing, brilliant spinner of tall tales, fluffing your pillow and tucking you in before you have a chance to remember that you are incapable of fully comprehending the infinite complexity of the universe. Your mind strives to make sense when there is none, diverting your attention from your utter lack of control.
Sigh.
It’s all in service of your survival. Truly.
But don’t you want to do more than just survive?
I’m also telling you stories. My challenge — really, the challenge of anyone who wishes to influence, delight, or otherwise create a change in you — is to be more compelling, more credible, than your brain, which has been honing its skills of self-deception for a lifetime. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why kids are easier to fool. They haven’t yet developed the capacity to fool themselves.
Alright. That’s not fair either. The rational, thinking mind doesn’t deceive for nefarious reasons. Its job is to keep us alive and safe. It analyzes situations, referencing past experiences to make somewhat educated guesses about cause and effect so we might avoid future harm. And since we’re social creatures, we may even trust someone else’s claims about their experience. We believe it, but we don’t know it like they do. Stories, metaphors, and analogies are powerful social tools by which we share knowledge and beliefs.
We believe many things that we haven’t actually experienced. Here’s a bit I wrote last year in The weight of cats and cancer:
A few weeks ago, I let them stick me with needles, drugs, radioactive fluid, and blue dye, then carve into my body to remove a lymph node and a piece of my breast “the size of a lemon”. All because of a pattern of dots on a monitor that indicated that I had a deadly disease that I could not feel, see, or otherwise sense at all.
It’s been surreal. Even the day of surgery, it didn’t really feel like I had cancer. I believed but I didn’t know. Not that deep-in-my-bones kind of knowing.
Making sense of “make sense”
I wonder if the only way to truly know something for sure is to experience it, which uses our senses. We don’t have to believe it exists. We know it exists because we sensed its presence, its reality. What started as external stimuli (facts) gets sensed by the body then tagged and catalogued with meaning (stories) by our mind.
Maybe our minds want to “make sense” when we’re presented with something that we cannot — for whatever reason — sense. It’s disorienting to be told “this is real” when you can’t sense it. The rational mind doesn’t want to believe, it wants to know for sure. It wants certainty. It attempts to make sense, to give us the impression that we have experienced it. If it doesn’t make sense, the rational mind doesn’t believe.
Sensing is knowing. Making sense is believing.
Does that make sense?
The desire to make sense
Each of us has a version of reality shaped by our perspective which is inherently limited by our past experiences, education, culture, biases, etc. What makes sense to someone else might not make sense to me and vice versa. That doesn’t make either one us wrong, though it can be easy to come to that conclusion.
When I utter “that makes sense”, I am basically saying “this fits with how I’ve experienced the world.” Alternatively, if something doesn’t make sense, maybe it’s because my mind cannot find anything in its catalog of past experiences out of which to “make sense”. It doesn’t match my view of what’s real or reasonable.
Humans experience physical stimuli through our senses, but we’re also thinking creatures. We’ve extrapolated the concept of sense — particularly feeling — to include thoughts and beliefs. We experience intuition and judgment about what feels right or wrong. I might say that someone’s choice doesn’t make sense to me because it’s not the choice I would have made. We value and prioritize different things.
Remembering that I have a perspective (my truth, not the truth) helps me be curious and thoughtful. While I don’t want to ignore truths (i.e. denial), I can ignore unhelpful beliefs. Particularly the assumptions created by a fearful mind.
One way I practice intentionality is to notice the words coming out of my mouth (and fingertips). Actually speaking or writing the phrase “make sense” indicates that, on some level, I’m aware that my mind is making shit up. When I hear the phrase, I pause and think:
Ha ha! I see what you’re doing, Ms Rational Brain. You desperately want to pattern match, to tell a narrative that explains this unknown thing.
Then I can relax a bit. Not take myself so seriously. Open myself to new possibilities.
Observe and listen
Are you willing to believe what I say is true (i.e. it makes sense)? If so, I hope the next time you hear the phrase “make sense” or “doesn’t make sense” you’ll pause to consider the power of the mind to create our realities. Your truth is one truth, not the truth.
Thank you for reading. Your attention is gift.
Love,
Kate
p.s. Like this letter? Help others get value from it, too. Please tap the heart and restack it.
p.p.s. Hello to new readers. If this was interesting, check out my archive. There are many posts — even before U/B 1 — about knowing, believing, perception, and the power of language.
A quick anecdote…
Making sense of unbelievable athleticism
My husband and I became somewhat fascinated by sport climbing while watching Olympic highlights this week. Two people compete side-by-side to race up identically created climbing walls. The athletes move with incredibly grace and speed, seemingly unencumbered by gravity. A belay mechanism retracts as they ascend, adding to the illusion that they are being pulled upward by an unseen force. We kept commenting, “How is that possible?” and “It doesn’t make sense”.
Unbeknownst to my husband, I was observing our bewilderment and taking mental notes for this letter.
Kate- "Sense" is definitely an interesting concept. I like your opening of "mind as a liar." Definitely got everyone, myself included, thinking. I appreciate you sharing this piece. Hope you're well this week? Cheers, -Thalia