Santa Claus
You may or may not believe in Santa Claus. But lots of children do. It is this childish belief that motivates millions of people to act as if they too believed it. Almost unconsciously, they conspire to confirm the validity of this childish belief. Because children believe in Santa Claus, the pre-Christmas tills in many countries are set a-ringing; and this annual phenomenon constitutes a significant motive for economic activity throughout the world throughout the year.The magic of the myth of Santa Claus does not end as soon as the child has become aware of the "truth". It will have converted most children into magicians, eager to perpetuate the myth by seeking to provide joyful moments in the lives of children down the generations.
To intend is to have in mind a specified purpose, use, or destination. It implies action in order achieve a desired end. Action changes conditions or circumstances.
To tell is to inform, to give an account of something, or to narrate a story.
To signify is to make known or to communicate some purpose or intention by some sign or combination of signs. This implies that the sign carries the same (or a similar) meaning for all participants in the communication. You may notice that, as often happens in life, an element of "circularity" has entered our discussion of meaning. This does not invalidate the train of thought. It shows that words (which are themselves signs) are inter-related in subtle ways whose significance would inevitably be lost in any attempt to analyse them too precisely. There is always some ambiguity in attempts at communication, and this arises from the strictly personal element both in the choice of signs by the transmitter and in their interpretation by the receiver.
I fear that too many of us in Western culture have been indoctrinated into supposing that meaning and understanding are essentially intellectual processes which are assumed to take place mainly, or even exclusively, in the brain, and that we arrive at our beliefs in a purely logical manner. But when we carefully and honestly examine the routes by which we arrive at important decisions, we shall usually find that our motives are mixed and that logic is frequently over-ruled by emotional, aesthetic or sentimental motives which may not have been subjected to intellectual consideration — perhaps because we may not even have been consciously aware of them. This common psychological trait is well appreciated by successful salesmen.
Whilst the intellect has an important part to play in discerning logical inconsistencies in our decision-making and may thus help to preserve us from making fools of ourselves, it is seldom the decisive factor. As a determinant of human behaviour, psychological truth may be more important than logical consistency.
As you go through life with this attitude, you will gradually come to adopt a small set of central beliefs or principles on which you can rely and from which you will gradually distil a consistent purpose or project for your life.
Unlike the professional scientist who amasses supportive evidence through a series of experiments which may be repeated objectively by others, you are not concerned with whether or not your belief, or lack of it, is shared by other people. The most important thing about a confirmed belief or principle is not that it has been arrived at by objective experiment or intellectual analysis or calculation of statistical probability or that it is the "accepted norm", but that it has received sufficient confirmation in your living experience to make you psychologically certain of its reliability. You gradually learn to act upon it with confidence, and eventually to stake your life on it. It will then have become a keynote of your character. You will have evolved a personal project which will crystallise as part of your personality. And you will have a story to tell.
Truth
To believe anything is to accept it as being true in respect of something that has some kind of significance for the believer. You may agree that some beliefs are more important, i.e. have more significance for you, than others. Looking back over your own life, you will also probably find that your beliefs are subject to change as you discern new meanings in the complex of things, events, circumstances, and ideas that occur to you or in your environment.
Meaning
Meaning is derived from the Old English mænan, to intend, tell, signify.
Understanding
To understand, in the fullest sense, is not only to seize the logical meaning of an attempt at communication, but also to appreciate the underlying intention and respond to it emotionally so that you yourself may act upon it in some way that means something to you. Every attempt at communication has to convey some emotional content if it is to be truly meaningful. A mere recital of facts is unlikely to be of interest unless it is emotionally, as well as intellectually, relevant to the life or purpose of the person or persons to whom it is addressed.
Principle
A principle is a basic belief that you accept as a guide to your personal behaviour. If it "lets you down", you "lose faith" in it and, following the scientific principle, you must either discard it or modify it in the light of experience so that it becomes more reliable in practice.
Faith
Faith is a special kind of belief — a belief on the basis of which you are prepared to act on your own responsibility. Seen in this light, faith is not something to which you are blindly committed even though you may have some doubts about its validity. It begins as a suspension of disbelief so that you may test the validity of some hypothesis or other in your own living experience. This is a private application of the scientific method. A hypothesis is a proposition which, if true, provides an explanation for phenomena which are otherwise inexplicable. Your immediate object is to test the truth or falsehood of the proposition by your own living experience.
Conclusion
All this implies that if I have no meaning in my life, I have nothing to communicate, no intention to put into effect, nothing to understand or sympathise with, no story to tell. I am as good as dead, having been reduced to the status of a mere consumer of goods and services. In such a state, it doesn't much matter whether I believe anything or not.