Meaning Making of Lived Experiences in Phenomenological Inquiry

Abstract

Phenomenology is all about making meaning of primal lived experiences. But it is often a huge challenge to know where to start interpreting the experiences as they are lived. van Manen has described the lifeworld existentials of phenomenology to be interwoven within the lived body, lived space, lived time, and lived human relations. These existentials have a deeper significance when we seek to interpret the lived experience for a phenomenon. In phenomenology, lived body is something more than our pair of limbs, torso, and head; lived space is not meant as physical space; lived time is different from object time; and lived relation is not merely human interaction. Simply put, they are felt body, space, time, and relation. Furthermore, these existentials are inseparably interwoven with each other in such a way that a superficial understanding of lifeworld will seldom attain those wonders hidden within the lived experiences. In this article, I have tried to simplify and elaborate on these individual lifeworld existentials with reference to my prior experience of phenomenological study in educational settings so that it is convenient for beginner scholars to understand the scope of meaningmaking in phenomenology.