The Need to Make Sense
*last updated on January 9, 2026
Take a look at the picture on this page. Before you decide whether you like it, dislike it, or feel nothing at all, something else happens first: you try to understand what you’re looking at. You may not even notice yourself doing it. The mind reaches for a label—sculpture, monster, animal, abstract art, something threatening—and then for an explanation—why it has claws, why it is only legs, why someone would place it in a yard. In a few seconds, you begin building a small story that makes the image “fit” inside a world you recognize.
That reflex is sensemaking.
I took this photo years ago while walking through a suburban neighborhood in Connecticut (West Hartford—or possibly Hartford; I no longer remember precisely). The figure startled me: a dark, human-animal hybrid shape, oversized for the yard it stood in, with sharp-looking claws and an unnervingly incomplete body—no arms, no wings, just a heavy head-or-nose-like form on legs. I didn’t know what it was, and I still don’t. That uncertainty is part of why it stays with me. It resists easy classification, and so it activates the mind’s persistent impulse: make this make sense.
[See also "Meaning-Making vs. Sensemaking"]
Why sensemaking is so automatic
A basic version of this impulse appears throughout life. Many organisms, even very simple ones, respond to their environment in ways that effectively answer a survival question: approach or avoid. They don’t do this with concepts the way humans do, but they do detect regularities and respond to cues in ways shaped by evolution.
Humans share that core survival logic, but we extend it dramatically. We don’t only register what our senses pick up; we interpret it through memory, culture, language, and expectation. We don’t simply react; we build a working understanding of what we’re encountering—and act on that understanding.
With this image, for example, most of us know we are looking at a photograph on a screen. That knowledge matters: a picture is not a physical threat. And yet knowledge does not always turn off the body. If an image resembles something dangerous, the emotional system can respond anyway—curiosity, fear, disgust, fascination—before the reflective mind finishes its sentence. The fact that it is “only a picture” may reduce the intensity, but it doesn’t necessarily eliminate the underlying mechanism.
What the mind is trying to accomplish
When we sense something unfamiliar or ambiguous, our response can be described as a quick set of pressures: to identify what it is, anticipate what it might mean, and decide what to do next. We don’t need to silently narrate these questions to ourselves. Often the entire process happens faster than language. But the goal is consistent: to create enough order in experience that we can move through the world effectively.
This is why the phrase “It doesn’t make sense” usually lands as a complaint, not a neutral observation. When something “doesn’t make sense,” it isn’t just confusing—it can feel unstable, even threatening. Confusion takes effort. Uncertainty can block decision-making. And prolonged meaninglessness can feel like a crack in the floor of reality: if we can’t interpret what is happening, we can’t reliably act.
The benefits of making sense
Sensemaking is not a decorative feature of the human mind. It is a practical tool that supports everyday functioning. It reduces cognitive load by grouping messy details into workable categories; it helps us anticipate outcomes and choose actions; it supports social life by letting us interpret other people’s behavior and intentions; and it can support psychological stability by turning chaos into something we can hold.
In that way, sensemaking can be healing. When life feels incoherent—after loss, conflict, change, failure—we often cope by building a narrative that restores continuity: this happened, it meant something, it connects to what came before, and I can live forward from it.
The shadow side: when sensemaking becomes distortion
The same mechanism that helps us function can also mislead us. Because sensemaking often relies on speed, it can lean toward simplification. It prefers clear categories over ambiguity, familiar stories over unfamiliar complexity. Sometimes it reaches a conclusion too fast and then clings to it, because certainty feels safer than not knowing.
This is where cognitive biases enter—not as abstract textbook terms, but as everyday mental habits. We may notice evidence that confirms our first interpretation and miss what complicates it; explain other people’s behavior using neat stories that flatter our worldview; turn limited experience into broad rules; or mistake a satisfying explanation for a true one.
In other words, making sense can create order, but not always accuracy. That matters most in the human domain—when we try to make sense of other people. A quick explanation can become a verdict: She is selfish. He is a bully. They are irrational. These labels provide instant coherence, but they can also close down understanding.
What I mean by “making sense” in this project
For me, sensemaking is not just the fast, automatic process that keeps a person oriented. It is also a deliberate practice: slowing down when the mind wants to rush, and asking whether the first explanation is too small for the situation.
When I encounter a person, event, or behavior that troubles me, my goal is not to “make sense” of it quickly so I can dismiss it. I want to understand it in a way that makes room for complexity: competing motives, limited information, fear, habit, social context, misunderstanding, history, constraints. That kind of sensemaking is slower and less emotionally satisfying at first, because it doesn’t give you the clean relief of certainty. But it is often more humane—and, over time, more stable.
The strange sculpture in the yard is a small example of the same dynamic. My mind wants to settle it: what it is, why it exists, what it says about the person who put it there. But the most honest answer may be partial: I don’t know. And sometimes that is the point. Some things resist quick sensemaking. They remind us that interpretation is something we do—not something the world hands to us prepackaged.
Sensemaking is essential. It helps us stay oriented. But it also carries risk: it can turn complexity into caricature. So the question is not whether we make sense—we do. The question is whether we can notice how we are doing it, and whether we’re willing, when needed, to revise the story.
About this project: Start page
That reflex is sensemaking.
I took this photo years ago while walking through a suburban neighborhood in Connecticut (West Hartford—or possibly Hartford; I no longer remember precisely). The figure startled me: a dark, human-animal hybrid shape, oversized for the yard it stood in, with sharp-looking claws and an unnervingly incomplete body—no arms, no wings, just a heavy head-or-nose-like form on legs. I didn’t know what it was, and I still don’t. That uncertainty is part of why it stays with me. It resists easy classification, and so it activates the mind’s persistent impulse: make this make sense.
[See also "Meaning-Making vs. Sensemaking"]
Why sensemaking is so automatic
A basic version of this impulse appears throughout life. Many organisms, even very simple ones, respond to their environment in ways that effectively answer a survival question: approach or avoid. They don’t do this with concepts the way humans do, but they do detect regularities and respond to cues in ways shaped by evolution.
Humans share that core survival logic, but we extend it dramatically. We don’t only register what our senses pick up; we interpret it through memory, culture, language, and expectation. We don’t simply react; we build a working understanding of what we’re encountering—and act on that understanding.
With this image, for example, most of us know we are looking at a photograph on a screen. That knowledge matters: a picture is not a physical threat. And yet knowledge does not always turn off the body. If an image resembles something dangerous, the emotional system can respond anyway—curiosity, fear, disgust, fascination—before the reflective mind finishes its sentence. The fact that it is “only a picture” may reduce the intensity, but it doesn’t necessarily eliminate the underlying mechanism.
What the mind is trying to accomplish
When we sense something unfamiliar or ambiguous, our response can be described as a quick set of pressures: to identify what it is, anticipate what it might mean, and decide what to do next. We don’t need to silently narrate these questions to ourselves. Often the entire process happens faster than language. But the goal is consistent: to create enough order in experience that we can move through the world effectively.
This is why the phrase “It doesn’t make sense” usually lands as a complaint, not a neutral observation. When something “doesn’t make sense,” it isn’t just confusing—it can feel unstable, even threatening. Confusion takes effort. Uncertainty can block decision-making. And prolonged meaninglessness can feel like a crack in the floor of reality: if we can’t interpret what is happening, we can’t reliably act.
The benefits of making sense
Sensemaking is not a decorative feature of the human mind. It is a practical tool that supports everyday functioning. It reduces cognitive load by grouping messy details into workable categories; it helps us anticipate outcomes and choose actions; it supports social life by letting us interpret other people’s behavior and intentions; and it can support psychological stability by turning chaos into something we can hold.
In that way, sensemaking can be healing. When life feels incoherent—after loss, conflict, change, failure—we often cope by building a narrative that restores continuity: this happened, it meant something, it connects to what came before, and I can live forward from it.
The shadow side: when sensemaking becomes distortion
The same mechanism that helps us function can also mislead us. Because sensemaking often relies on speed, it can lean toward simplification. It prefers clear categories over ambiguity, familiar stories over unfamiliar complexity. Sometimes it reaches a conclusion too fast and then clings to it, because certainty feels safer than not knowing.
This is where cognitive biases enter—not as abstract textbook terms, but as everyday mental habits. We may notice evidence that confirms our first interpretation and miss what complicates it; explain other people’s behavior using neat stories that flatter our worldview; turn limited experience into broad rules; or mistake a satisfying explanation for a true one.
In other words, making sense can create order, but not always accuracy. That matters most in the human domain—when we try to make sense of other people. A quick explanation can become a verdict: She is selfish. He is a bully. They are irrational. These labels provide instant coherence, but they can also close down understanding.
What I mean by “making sense” in this project
For me, sensemaking is not just the fast, automatic process that keeps a person oriented. It is also a deliberate practice: slowing down when the mind wants to rush, and asking whether the first explanation is too small for the situation.
When I encounter a person, event, or behavior that troubles me, my goal is not to “make sense” of it quickly so I can dismiss it. I want to understand it in a way that makes room for complexity: competing motives, limited information, fear, habit, social context, misunderstanding, history, constraints. That kind of sensemaking is slower and less emotionally satisfying at first, because it doesn’t give you the clean relief of certainty. But it is often more humane—and, over time, more stable.
The strange sculpture in the yard is a small example of the same dynamic. My mind wants to settle it: what it is, why it exists, what it says about the person who put it there. But the most honest answer may be partial: I don’t know. And sometimes that is the point. Some things resist quick sensemaking. They remind us that interpretation is something we do—not something the world hands to us prepackaged.
Sensemaking is essential. It helps us stay oriented. But it also carries risk: it can turn complexity into caricature. So the question is not whether we make sense—we do. The question is whether we can notice how we are doing it, and whether we’re willing, when needed, to revise the story.
About this project: Start page
