In every age and across every culture, people have attempted to 'define' what it means to be human, what is good and ill, what is the nature of our being and capability.
It is a blessing that we cannot fully know all that has shaped us nor fully know what we or might be. If someone did actually crack the code on human beings, what a bore life would be. The mystery would be over. Our lives and relationships would be reduced into procedures in a cook book. It would choke our freedom to be curious, to wander and wonder, what might be possible. Most of all it would steal from us the joy of being surprised.
Even though countless people, many of them 'geniuses' have spent their lives carving through every nook and cranny to unlock the secrets of our restless hearts and ever changing minds, although some broad stroke principles have emerged at a very high level, no one has quite figured out the 'answers'.
There are many who feel (often very vehemently) that definitive answers have been found. They feel quite sincerely that they have mapped the coordinates of the human condition and these can be used to manage and control life.
As happy as i am for the vast contributions of these pioneers, at the same time I can not help but feel that after thousands of years, if the truth were so self evidentt, would we have not by now abolished the struggle, anguish and wars that continue to tear us apart?
Even physicists and biologists are still discovering new truths every day about our physical world and being. And perhaps that is the point? That it is the questions we ask not the answers we arrive at - that set us free.
The great poetic and spiritual movements have not arrived at solutions, but they engage us in a personal and collective act of inquiry. They invite us to continous awakening and mindfulness. They suggest that living a life is not about discovering that the answer is 42, but it is experiencing the unknown and unknowable, so we are always 'strangers' always bringing a beginners mind to each and every relationship, every encounter and every breath.
I know this is not everyones cup of tea, but for me the joy of life is not in knowing because that is easy, the joy is in the openess to be free to be afraid, to be strangers forever discovering the vastness of what we are and how infinitely unknowable we may be?
"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The Tragedy of Hamlet,
Act 1, Scene V
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