Finally Admitting I Don't Know Anything 2.13.25
Or: Surrendering to a Life Of Wonder
Have you ever stopped to think about just how little you know?
I’ve got three kids in public school, with two of them being in Middle School. The other night my 8th grader came to me and asked for help with her math homework. So I asked her to bring her laptop, on which she was working on said homework, into my office so I could have a look.
I may as well have been looking at homework written in hieroglyphics.
But as little as I know about eight grade math homework, that’s not the kind of knowing I’m talking about.
I’m talking about big picture. Grand scheme. 30,00 feet. All that jazz.
It can be really tempting, especially in this world of social media where everybody has an opinion about everything, to think there are people that know it all. That have it all figured out. That have cracked the code and are far more enlightened than the rest of us. They’ve read all of the books, listened to all of the podcasts, and watched all of the interviews. When you listen to them talk about anything, it seems like they know everything.
Hear me when I say, as much as they know, they still know absolutely nothing.
According to several studies, we only know ANYTHING about roughly 5% of the universe. The observable universe contains as many as an estimated 2 trillion galaxies, and more stars than there are grains of sand on Earth.
Oh, and that 95% that we know nothing about? It’s expanding. Which means that infinite nothingness is expanding. If you haven’t heard comedian Pete Holmes talk about this, he says it much better than I can (language warning for little ears)
Here on earth, it’s not any better. We’ve explored only 5% of our world’s ocean. You’d think we’d at least get our own house in order, but it doesn’t seem that way. Because that unexplored part has zero visibility, is extremely cold (think a degree or two above freezing) and has enough pressure to kill a human being instantly.
But beyond all of the trivial knowledge that we don’t have, that’s not what I’m interested in. I don’t really care why the pressure at the bottom of the ocean is so great, or how much gravity is sucked into a Black Hole.
The kind of things I want to know are much more close to home.
When I listen to certain songs, why do I feel an ache in my heart that I can’t explain?
When I stood in the Basilica Sacré Coeur in Paris, why was I instantly brought to tears?
Why can I still taste a meal I ate years ago?
Why does my heart melt when my 9 year old makes me a snack?
I’m sure there are scientific reasons for all of these things, but I think there are also much deeper reasons. Reasons that live somewhere science can’t touch. Reasons that defy logic and rationalization.
These are the things I’m interested in.
These are the things that I want to spend the rest of my life unpacking and discovering.
These are the things that I want to understand, even if it means understanding nothing else.
Because ultimately, these are the only things that matter.
I want to give my life only to the pursuit of things that matter, and resign the rest to mystery and wonder.
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