Our perspective refers to the manner in which we see something, anything, everything. Our meaning perspective refers to how we interpret what our perspective allows us to see. Our meaning perspective offers us a way of taking the apparent chaos that surrounds us from time to time and giving it some form which we have predetermined before we see what we see. Oddly, we operate in this way, generally, while remaining remarkably unaware of the existence of that meaning perspective. Our friend who lives in what we see as a mess doesn't say to her/him self, "Oh, this is really a mess, but I see it through a meaning perspective that tells me it’s the best kind of order I can have being the unorganized kind of person I am." Our limited awareness of meaning perspectives often comes in the form of "I am" statements:
"I am lazy."
"I am a procrastinator."
"I am angry."
"I am stupid."
"I am wonderful."
"I am lousy."
"I am smart."
"I am a liar."
"I am always late."
When we speak the "I am" phrase, we refer to something that we believe forms an essential, definable part of us—what we present to ourselves and the world as our identity. When one of the being statements feels threatened or defensive, the person who holds it will say, "Don't try to change me. That's just the kind of person I am." Or "Don't try to change me. You have to accept me that way I am."
All this refers to a state of being. It's a very existential grammatical form that speaks of the reality of existence our self and our role in that reality. When someone says in the jargon form, "It just be's that way, bro" that person refers to something that person believes and recognizes as an unchangeable part of the universal structure of reality. That's a truly existential statement although the speaker may well see it more simply, clearly, and directly than that. However the speaker perceives these statements, it doesn't change their startling, revelatory quality. We must leave whatever is under discussion alone, it says, because it represents an unchangeable, immutable, and incorrigible reality.
When we use the "to be" statement, we limit the way we see ourselves and the world. That limits how we act in the world. That limitation of action often supports and validates the meaning perspective that determined the action, so we feel validated in our belief. It works in this neat way with its own self-generating justification mechanism always part of the process. That does a lot to keep the problem and the profound benefit of cognitive dissonance[2] at bay. Statements of being simply seem to settle all questions about our self and the world in which that self operates.
Meaning perspectives often if not always, operate in this powerful, existential, and unquestioned manner, but are all these statements even true? Not when we examine them, reflect on them critically. Meaning perspectives using the "To be" form makes for a surety about how everything works in us and around us. We can find something very comforting in such form making. However, meaning perspectives come from our past or from someone else's past. If they come from the past and determine what we see in the present, then we live to a greater or lesser degree in the past, inside the meaning perspective produced in the past. In that way, meaning perspectives limit or determine the choices that we can and do make, or they eliminate choices we might wish to make from even the remotely possible. That's why we often talk about how we have to "change," so we can make a new choice. That always sounds very daunting if not frightening and self-hurtful. Meaning perspectives can keep us from realizing that we can make choices that will change outcomes but not necessarily ourselves. We may not need to change ourselves at all to make such choices which feel a great deal less frightening and nearly impossible than "change."