Symbols are clever things.
Symbols are clever things.
If you think about it, they have a huge capacity for holding meaning, packed into what is often a very simple shape. For example, a cross is just two lines… and yet it also holds millenia of meaning, both collective and personal.
Company logos are also symbols - think of everything you associate with the McDonalds M, or an apple with a bite out of it.
What comes to mind when you think about a yin yang? A peace sign? A police uniform? Uniforms are symbols of things, too - authority or belonging to name a few. What about the colour red? The meaning that colours hold for you will likely vary depending on your cultural background.
Symbols hold collective meaning (a stop sign, for example), but they are also infused with deeply personal meanings drawn from our experiences with them. Take the colour black for example. For some, black is a symbol of depression and darkness. For me personally, black feels like a refuge, a place to rest. Ten years ago when I was studying art therapy, many of the drawings I did as we were learning were ringed in black, which felt containing and comforting to me.
Anything can be a symbol, a visual representation of something else. A heart, for love. A dove, for peace. An owl, for wisdom. A white stick figure on a blue background for here's the toilet.
Once you start looking, they're everywhere.
So your mission for the week is to start looking, and think about the personal meaning that the symbols you notice hold for you. Often meaning will start first as a feeling - if you look at a tree as a symbol, how do you feel? And what does that tell you about the meaning held within that symbol?
Do you feel grounded, stable, expansive? Do you find yourself contracting a little, feeling weirdly guilty and then realise you're thinking about climate change and the decimation of forests? Do you feel the pull to sit down and slow down, to move at the pace a tree might move? All these things tell you about what a tree symbolises for you.
Your second mission, should you choose to accept it, is to start using your collection of personal symbols in a way that feels meaningful to you. Perhaps you stick a picture of a tree on your fridge to remind you to ground. Perhaps you put a small statue of an angel in your car like a guardian so you feel protected there. Perhaps you spend a phone call doodling stars on a scrap of paper to help you feel connected to all the galaxy.
Get creative - there are no wrong answers.
And if you play with symbols and feel like sharing what you find, please do! I would love to hear what you come up with. And, if you'd like to join me next week to explore some of your personal symbols using a tarot card as a jumping off point, I would love to see you there.