|
|
Dalton
Roberts |
|
|
|
Cynthia Kear shocked me in her Death on a Beautiful Day when she described her emotions during her beloved sister’s slow death from breast cancer: “It became clear to me that my (spiritual) practice had become, exquisitely and excruciatingly, learning to dwell in this all-pervasive land called ‘I don’t know.’ Yet this is where we all live, all the time.” I guess the shock was someone actually saying we live in a state of “I don’t know” all the time. To hear televangelists and to watch people jumping up and down in response to them you can’t help thinking they surely know something you don’t know. Presidents seem so certain and somber when they address the nation that we think they surely know. All we know for certain in both cases is that the emotion of “I think I know” has been stirred. It is not a problem to not know. It is a liberating fact of life. Part of the liberation is the realization that we don’t have to know. Another part is that it installs within us a questioning attitude and life doesn’t teach us anything until we ask questions. I cannot exactly quote Einstein but he said there is as much beauty in the questions we ask as in the answers. He said the great beauty is in the awe we feel, as we look at all the mysteries. I remember a news conference I held when I was county executive in which I said “I don’t know” several times in response to the questions of reporters. One of them said, “You keep saying, ‘I don’t know.’ Politicians don’t talk like that. They usually talk even more when they don’t know trying to convince you they do know.” I told him politicians whistle when they walk through the cemetery at night just like the rest of us. All I know is that each year I live I become more aware that I really don’t know much. My little thimble isn’t half full. It does not depress me any longer. It is actually a comfort. If life expected me to know, surely I would have been given the equipment to know. It is easier to accept my role as a slow learner when I see how slow everyone else is, including those whose titles make it appear they know. I thought doctors knew everything until one almost killed me. I thought a preacher knew everything until he lied to me like a dirty dog and put my family in pain and peril. I thought lawyers knew a lot until I saw one let a friend who was innocent go to prison. It is such a comfort to look behind titles and reputations and see that I must question life tenaciously. I may never completely know a lot but it does appear that life is more a matter of knowing as much as you need to know to live it well today. It’s the “little learnings” that come when we need them that will get us successfully to the end. I remember how lost I was when mother died. She had been my greatest source of wisdom and insight into life. I had no idea the last time I had tea with her at the old home place that she would be gone in just 16 days. I still feel shocked when I think about it. I don’t know why such sad moments come to us but the day she died I walked out of the hospital and the sun was shining. The trees were all dressed up in summer green. A cool breeze stirred that seemed to soothe my soul as well as my skin. It seemed I heard her say, “Don’t worry so much about what you don’t know. Relish each day and what you need will be given to you along the way.” No, I don’t know much. But so far I have found those words to be true.
|
