Being comfortable with the unknowable

I’m distrustful of people that seem to “know” everything. I write because I don’t know a lot and I hope if I’m really wrong, someone will call me out and teach me something.

They state things as facts that are surely stacked a top assumptions. Many of which, they probably haven’t vetted and aren’t aware.

I fall culprit to this, myself, when I’m selling something because no sales pitch starts with “Well, maybe…”

They exist in beautiful hotel and are describing what’s on the walls as a constant truth. They do so without thinking that the owner isn’t going make rent and, soon enough, the place they’re standing will be a Starbucks.

The wall to their right won’t be there, the ceiling will be dropped and split in two a two story space by the developer. The couch they’re sitting on pontificating will be in a consignment shop in the bad part of town.

Reality changes.

To know now, isn’t to know tomorrow. That feeling of a constantly changing fast-paced world makes many queasy. The fact that there are so many moving parts in our systems compels some to try to tie down some facts as absolutes.

If you find yourself looking for answers, ask yourself if you really need them to exist and thrive.

The truth is, very little, above the physics that drives our universe is absolute. And even there, when you get to the Quantum levels, it gets very ‘spooky’ again.

Where does that leave us?

It leaves us in a place where we have to accept the unknowable. Rather than trying to define it and quantify it, we need to accept it as unknowable. We have to accept that any measurement we make, impacts what we’re measuring. We have to accept that by simply looking in a direction we’ve changed things.