All of us, whoever we are, go through situations we did not choose. We face loss, mistakes, disappointments. And we fall into the terrible trap of thinking that, as if they were wounds on our skin, those events are what mark us or break us.
But psychology has for decades pointed to what, with astonishing clarity, Aldous Huxley pointed out in his essay Texts and Pretexts. Because, although the author is chiefly known for his celebrated science fiction work, Brave New World, few realise that Huxley was also a thinker ahead of his time, who already in 1920 foresaw the decline of an era. Acquainted with the most human of arts—the creative act—Huxley knew well that it is not what happens to us that marks us, but what we do with it. And that is what gives life its meaning.
It’s not what happens to us
Throughout his philosophical career, Huxley showed a keen interest in the word “experience”. In The Perennial Philosophy he dedicates lengthy diatribes to analysing religious experience, the experience of beauty and other forms of manifestation of the mystical. Experience, for Huxley, was the raw material with which poets work. And for him, “the poet is, etymologically, the creator”. We will come back to this later, because it connects profoundly with what we now know about human psychology.
Meanwhile, let us turn to the quotation at the heart of this article. “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him,” the writer notes in the introduction to his essay. It thus connects with a powerful truth: it is not what happens to us, but how we interpret it, that marks us for life.
Modern cognitive psychology vindicates Huxley. Thoughts lie between the event and the emotion, so two people can live the same thing and suffer in radically different ways. This does not mean the loss doesn’t sting, that betrayal leaves a mark, or that the victim is to blame for their pain. It is simply a lifebuoy for anyone stuck in the pit of suffering. A notion that can save those who seek to understand it. The mind continually interprets reality, and that can either help us or hinder us.
The interpretation that wounds
Two children could experience exactly the same incident, yet attach very different interpretations. Watching Father Christmas come into the house at Christmas may be, for one, a reason for joy (he brings presents!), and for the other a total nightmare (who is that bearded man bursting into my lounge?). The way they interpret the event will depend on many factors: their temperament, the security provided by the family, the capacity for emotional regulation, and so on.
There are things we cannot alter, or over which we have only a limited margin of action. We are all born, for example, with a certain imprint, what psychology calls “temperament.” You are more or less sociable, more or less sensitive, more or less flexible. And there isn’t much you can change about what you bring from birth. If you can, however, know yourself well enough to anticipate your own reactions.
Yet there is another broad spectrum where we can influence. We can work on our security, our emotional regulation and the way we interpret what happens. Generally, humans tend towards what is known as the “negativity bias”—an ancestral method of analysing events intended to help us survive in the wild, but which in the twenty‑first century makes little sense.
Knowing, for example, this bias that tends to make us see things through a negative lens, can help us challenge it. We can also work on what is known as cognitive restructuring: identifying, questioning and changing negative or distorted thought patterns that cause us deep distress.
Re-signification: when being a poet saves you
The final option offered by psychology for altering the way we experience events (even those already in the past) is re-signification. And it is perhaps the one that most closely aligns with Huxley’s philosophy.
Re-signification is simply the process of bestowing a new meaning or sense on something (an event, an object, a word) that already had one, radically changing it to fit a new context. In psychology, it means shifting the meaning of what harmed us to empower ourselves, to develop resilience.
Huxley, as we have noted, “the poet is, etymologically, the creator,” would perhaps tell us that this is the best path to modify experience. “It is a matter of sensitivity and intuition, of seeing and hearing what is meaningful, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and coordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves,” continues the quotation that opens this article.
The aim of all this is simply to invite us to be creators, not receivers. Protagonists, not victims of our story. Were you hurt? Create something beautiful from your pain and it will change its meaning. The world is only as dark as you decide to see it, for you must never forget your own capacity to create light.
