I don’t think meaning is strictly something we find sitting out in the world waiting for us, and I don’t think it’s something we completely invent out of nothing either. It feels like both things are happening at the same time, constantly folding into each other.

Take religion, for example. At some point, something happens—an experience, a story, a moment someone couldn’t fully explain. That moment gets noticed, remembered, shared. And then it starts to gather meaning around it. People connect it to something bigger than themselves. Over time, that shared belief becomes structured, named, practiced. In a way, meaning was discovered in the experience… but also created by the people who kept believing in it and shaping it.

Superstitions feel similar.

A broken mirror. Walking under a ladder. Black cats crossing your path. Somewhere, somehow, these ideas started with an event—something happened, and someone connected it to bad luck. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was fear trying to make sense of randomness. But then it repeats. Enough people experience something similar after the same action, and suddenly it sticks. The pattern becomes “real,” not because the universe confirmed it, but because people did.

That’s the part I keep circling back to: coincidence happens all the time, but humans are wired to connect it. We link events together, we assign weight to them, and then we teach each other those connections until they feel like truth.

So maybe meaning isn’t one or the other.
Maybe it’s something we uncover in fragments… and then build into something bigger without realizing we’re building it.

I’ll go first: I think meaning starts as discovery—but survives as creation.

Prompt question:
Do you think meaning exists on its own, or only because we decide it does?

Some truths aren’t found or made—they’re layered until they feel like both.