The Sacred Lake: Received Infrastructure vs. Bestowed Meaning

In E.M. Forster's A Room with a View, there is a pond near Lucy and Freddy Honeychurch's childhood home that Lucy reveals they had named, as children, the "Sacred Lake". In the progress of the story, the lake functions as a kind of symbolic barometer of spiritual health. When Freddy, George Emerson, and Mr. Beebe decide to swim there, in good spirits, good cheer, and a kind of lovely unaffected camaraderie, the lake is in full boom and at its most beautiful:

They climbed down a slippery bank of pine-needles. There lay the pond, set in its little alp of green -- only a pond, but large enough to contain the human body, and pure enough to reflect the sky. On account of the rains, the water had flooded the surrounding grass, which showed like a beautiful emerald path, tempting feet towards the central pool. [...] How glorious it was! The world of motor-cars ... receded illimitably. Water, sky, evergreens, a wind -- these things not even the seasons can touch, and surely they lie beyond the intrusions of man?

When Lucy is engaged to Cecil, that is to say, when artificiality and self-deception are at their height, the lake is shallow and sick:

Presently they came to a little clearing among the pines -- another tiny green alp, solitary this time, and holding in its bosom a shallow pool. She exclaimed, "The Sacred Lake!" "Why do you call it that?" "I can't remember why. I suppose it comes out of some book. It's only a puddle now, but you see that stream going through it? Well, a good deal of water comes down after the heavy rains, and can't get away at once, and the pool becomes quite large and beautiful."

Received social infrastructures--the ones we're born into--nations, religious organizations, other patterns of people, whether organically emergent or consciously organized, can create a sense of legitimacy around the assignment of meaning by weight of their popularity, length of history, shared belief in their institutional validity, and so on. It might be more accurate to say 'identification' of meaning; or, 'identification and assignment' of meaning--we are after all observer-participants in life, not just observers, and not just participants. 

The legitimacy isn't any the less authentic for exploring how it usually works. Yet, as A Room with a View shows, individuals can identify or assign meaning to things on their own initiative, from their own perspective on life, without passively depending on some pre-existing or larger pattern of people to do it for them, or thinking that such larger or historical organizations have acquired the exclusive right to do so by virtue of their historical weight or validity. And with the passage of time, when looked back upon, especially if done with charm, humanity, and sincerity, and not tainted by anything impure, nor an oppresively heavy seriousness--it should be fun!--such individually-bestowed or individually-identified meanings can acquire a legitimacy and loveliness about them as great as any institution could confer.