Friday, October 16, 2009

Trust and knowledge

My mind cannot wrap around the whole of life. This may sound obvious. It is, in fact, obvious, yet each time I tell myself this, swearing I'll give up trying to curl my brain around the intricacies of life, surrender certain knowledges to the abyss of untried thoughts, I hesitate. I selfishly want every ounce of understanding I can attain in this lifetime. I want every truth that rears its ugly head and even every idea posing as truth. I don't think this is a particularly healthy desire, at least if one is attempting to cope in the world, especially considering how impossible this is, both the knowing and the coping.

I'm impatient, on top of this, with my desire. I search the minds of those around me for the shards of understandings they have acquired. I poke them, trying to let them keep their thoughts for their own, but desperately wanting them to give them up to me. I unfold wrinkles in my knowing to discover I've bunched things into knots in the process. Yet, despite this, I'm still hopelessly ignorant. I don't want to wait for time to tell, to teach.

I grow angry with knowledge, useless as if so often is. I threaten to throw it out, but its an idle threat. I love the mind's churning as it rattles my brain into anxiety. I want it to grow thick like butter, to gain richness in the painful shaking. I'm not sure why. I wish I could live in peace with the unknown, with uncertainty. So much of life feels uncertain, unstable. Each piece of understanding feels like a three legged chair. There is always something missing from the equation and I don't think that in this lifetime we can know everything in the fullness of knowing, but this frustrates me to no end.

Trust is not an easy attribute.

1 comment:

Abby said...

I love the phrase, "I want to grow thick like butter, to gain richness in the painful shaking." Such a gratifying simile.

I think part of this all is what God meant by putting eternity and finitude together in our beings. Frustrating but enriching.

Thanks for this, Aubs.