Many of us can recall a time we felt some new pain and wondered what the cause was. A pain without an explanation is a pain doubled. Sometimes, not-knowing can be fun and add openness, excitement, and anticipation to our lives. But often, it’s just another source of worry.
We have this sense of ourselves, of what it’s like to reflect on our feelings or experiences. I think I know what it feels like to be me.
But there are times that I’m not so sure. For example, when I realize my attitude, energy level, or what I enjoy doing has changed. Or when so much is going on inside my mind it seems like foreign territory, and I have no idea where it all came from or where it’s leading me. Our inner world can feel so vast and elusive. Or sometimes someone says something about me that shocks me. And as I get older, this rate of change intensifies. I never know from day to day how I’ll be or, of course, what will happen. This is another dimension of not-knowing. We might feel we don’t even know ourselves. How can we control what we don’t know?
And then there’s the negativity bias, where we imagine the worst so we’re ready to take action to prevent it. And we develop a theory about ourselves that’s just too awful to face and we cease to care about the reality; we catastrophize and paralyze ourselves. In this case, friends can help us perceive and face what we need to face but haven’t.
The same is true if a neighbor, friend, or loved one is in pain. If we don’t know the cause, we worry twice as much about them. We want to help. This is part of our natural compassion. If we have an explanation, a reason, even a mere theory of a cause, we worry less. We have a way to help. Even if the reality is bad, there’s often a sense of comfort in knowing.
But sometimes the suggestions we offer others can be hurtful. We can unknowingly imply we’re superior in some way, or that the person is ignorant, or doesn’t know what we think they should know. We can’t totally get into their mind with ours and maybe we don’t want to use our empathy and imagination to even try do so.
One issue here is feeling hurt and helpless in the face of another’s pain. We can feel a loss of control in being powerless to help. So, we reach for something to give us that control. But I wonder about control. What does it really mean?
We might also expect there to be reasons for things. Not just causes, but something like God delivering prizes and penalties. When something awful happens to a good person, and to ourselves, we might try to figure out “what did we do to deserve this?” But I think God is too big or the intelligence of the universe too inclusive to think in terms prizes and penalties. Maybe, the teaching about Karma is correct, and one thing, one action, one intention simply sets up the conditions for other actions and intentions.
And when I try so hard to find an explanation, I could simply be enjoying expanding my knowledge. I love reading and learning. But it can also be an attempt to turn reality into words and people into concepts. A word is so much smaller than the reality it purports to explain. And a concept of a person can describe at most a tiny particle of them. A little bit of humility about what we think we know can go a long way.
We know (but might not accept) that reality is constantly changing. We can’t know what will happen next. We live in a vast, infinite universe that defies our attempts to capture it in thoughts. But maybe we can be open to this. Maybe we can let ourselves feel what we feel and perceive how we perceive without trying to fill the silent space with inner speech and ideas. We can mindfully learn enough about ourselves and others so we’re alive to our changes; and we begin to perceive change as providing the material we’re given with which to live, play, and create. The Greek philosopher, Socrates might have agreed with Buddhists when he said what makes him wise is that “what I do not know I do not think I know either.”
We can do our best to ask ourselves, “Is my push to explain leading me to expand my sense of self? Or is it to not-see, to ignore or bury others in my idea of who I am?” Is it to stop the changes we feel in others and ourselves? Or to learn from whatever arises so we can better live with it– so we can help reduce the suffering in the world and make life better for others and ourselves? We can use empathy with the Golden Rule, not only “do unto others” but allow ourselves to feel what others might feel. Or we can consider why we might say or do what someone else is saying or doing. In such things, doing our best is all we can ask for.
I loved what the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke had to say about this, in his book Letters to A Young Poet: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Unsplash
