“I know enough now, to know, that I don’t know anything.”
Some say, “Life is unfair.” It is true, there is this seemingly random thing, that is throwing a major monkey wrench in all of our ideas about how life should go. This is one of the most predictable aspects of the unpredictability of our lives. Unknowing reigns — from the time and means of our death, to the chances of making it from here to there — we don’t know. It is all a crapshoot, and we have to make a life without knowing what each moment may bring.
This is a fact of our existence. Uncertainty is inconvenient, messing with all our plans, and liberating us from our ruts. It has a capacity to change us that we envy and fear. Unknowing, like it or not, plays a major role in our lives, shaping us in unpredictable ways and forming who we are.
Unknowing is sort of like the monster in the closet. It doesn’t really exist, except it does. As we age and get more experienced, uncertainty grows. The monster of unknowing comes out of the closet, and the horrible realization that we live at the mercy of something else comes with it.
Coming to terms with what you cannot understand, or even anticipate, is part of life. There are many strange discoveries that accompany a life. Amongst the strangest, and oddly most surprising, is the discovery that not-knowing is a friend. Aging, because it brings more experience, convinces us.
The truth is that unknowing doesn’t grow; we do. There is no more unlikelihood now then there was then. Life, by throwing us screwball after screwball, has softened us up. The experience of being off balance — and knowing one is off balance — becomes too overwhelming to ignore.
As the awareness of the depth of unknowing dawns, so does the capacity to begin accepting and coming to terms with it. From the vulnerability that such a realization generates there is born a new way of seeing and operating. This change occurs as the self ripens.
It introduces one to a world that is fluid, changing, and where things are not just what they seem. This “through the looking glass” reality is closer to home. Proportion shifts. Uncertainty turns us around. It introduces us first to probability, then to not knowing, the deeper vulnerability that, like death, means that things can change in an instant, and that nothing about life is predictable.
Long ago (in the 18th century) a French mathematician created a model that captures the paradox that lies at the heart unknowing. He pointed out that if all knowledge formed a sphere, then when knowledge grew, so grew the surface area of the sphere. What this meant, was that as the sphere of knowledge grew, its surface came into greater contact with the unknown. As we grow, as we know and experience more, we come into contact with more of the unknown, and it seems that we know even less. When Mystery dawns; the world comes alive in a new way.
There is a poignancy to not-knowing that characterizes the elder experience.
Unknowing is a kind of innocence that is unlike the innocence of childhood. Instead of ignorance —the unknowing described here — is a deliberate awareness, a kind of surrender, a reverence for a larger un-comprehended reality.
Unknowingness is characteristic of late life development. Not-knowing is the way many old people are. They aren’t demented, and aren’t suffering from some other form of addled thinking, instead they have a handle on the true nature of reality. Life is festooned with uncertainty. The Mystery that haunts and defines the moment is always disguised. Life has seen to it, and some old people have become in tune with it.
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