The panorama of the objective world is meaningless until we interact with it. For example, if there is a rock that we pass day after day but we do not notice, then that rock has no significance for us. If we decide to make that rock a votive object and pray to it for decades, then that rock becomes quite important. To an outsider who does not subscribe to the rock's assigned meaning, it will continue to be just a rock. In all cases, the rock was just a rock. It was only human interaction that created its meaning.

It is a mistake to assume that the meaning we give to something is as concrete and tangible as the object itself. We should not confuse the two. For example, our house may be precious to us, but our sense of preciousness has nothing to do with the building -- it comes from the values and memories we associate with it. If we lose our house, we must remember that it is the feeling we have for it, not just the building itself, that determines our loss.

If all perception of reality is subjective, some schools of thought suggest that we should therefore see everything as unreal. By contrast, followers of Tao maintain that we must still interact with the world. If we do not take initiative and work with this phenomena of projecting meaning and receiving its echoes, we fall into a state of dormancy, and the world will not exist for us at all. As long as we remember that meanings we attribute to objects are subjective, we will avoid mistakes.