I’m working with a friend on a YouTube documentary series and this is my friend’s first foray into doing interviews. I, on the other hand, have been doing interviews for just under a decade for a variety of formats. (You would think that I’m pretty good, but I’m going over footage from my latest documentary right now and boy, I need some work on delivering questions! Still, I know a thing or two about the art.)

About ten years ago, I was sitting in a lecture hall at UC Irvine taking research methods with Professor Gilmore, a sweet elderly sociologist with a strong southern accent. He told us that when we asked subjects about what they thought about something, we should ask them to tell a story. After they complete the story, Gilmore said, “Then ask them what that story means to them.”

The theory behind asking about meaning is not some flippant idea, but an idea borrowed from psychology that helps people tell their histories and helps them “make sense of influences, relationships, and sources of knowledge in the world.” (Wikipedia page on meaning-making)

Meaning situates people in their world. If you ask a person who recently lost a dog, you can sometimes ask what it means to them, and you may hear a response like, “Losing my dog taught me that life is short, and I need to cherish sooner and more often.”

Having asked people about meaning in their lives, I’ve wondered why meaning is important. I think I recently stumbled on an answer.

Meaning-making contains a spiritual aspect, as well. It shows us where a person is, where they’re coming from, and where they’re going. If our lives are journeys to be experienced, as the mystics claim, it is helpful to compare notes about our journey. So learning about other’s meaning making helps us out in our own path.

Without making meaning of our life’s challenges and triumphs, we become an amorphous blob with no particular direction in life. Experiences pass through us like wind through a broken windmill. What kind of life is that?

This perhaps explains the importance of moments of self-reflection, introversion, and meditation. It loosens our gears, so to speak, so the windmill can turn, then in turn, churn what it needs inside of us. All too often do I, unfortunately, see friends continually re-enter situations over and over because they haven’t let the lesson — the meaning of their situation — come to them.

I often find that when I ask people to make meaning of their lives and the situations they come into, I’m the first person to do such a thing. I sometimes catch them off guard, and as a result, their responses are fresh and unvarnished. People also appreciate the question of being asked what something means to them, too. So that’s a practical conversation trick.