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The Art of Not Knowing

8/6/2018

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It’s my nature, I guess, as a writer. I need to know every f*cking thing. It’s always been that way for me. If a subject interested me, I dived deep into research. No stone was left unturned. I obsessed until my quest for knowledge was satiated, or so I thought. I have gone from trying to understand a soldier’s PTSD, to the actions of a terrorist. I have peeked behind celebrity curtains to bring secrets to light and yes, I have learned how to clone. For many writers, this is our life.

On occasion, well, often this quest for knowledge has bought me to the point where I questioned my own sanity. When my cognitive senses and rationale couldn’t understand, the monkey in my mind did somersaults trying to comprehend. What is happening! And the all consuming WHY? WHY?

In the movie, “A Room with a View,” Julian Sand’s character made a habit of painting a question mark behind every door, a man searching for sense in a senseless world. I can so relate.

The irony is, the more we think we know, or try to understand, the less we know. To quote myself from Edge of Civilization - (LOL, yes, I went there).

“Knowledge is a man’s bitch.”


It truly is a bitch. It keeps taunting us to the point of mental exhaustion. So, how do we tame the wily shrew of knowledge. Is it delving more into research, more obsessive stalking into ideas, people and places that interest us or it is at some point get to the realization that knowledge is only as good as our imagination. That no matter how much we think we know, we know shit.

Knowledge is something I have struggled with my entire life. I am a knowledge junkie. I have an addiction to knowledge, which may not seem to be a bad thing until one realizes how obsessive it can become.  BUT I GOTTA KNOW!

Once again, the answer was inside me and it came out in Serendipidus.

“Maybe it’s time to set aside intellectualism and celebrate the wonders that can’t be explained.”


Set aside intellectualism? What kind of crazy talk is that? Why celebrate what can’t be explained?

Liberating ourselves from the obsessive need for knowledge actually frees us to feel. Our heady society keeps pounding its head into the wall trying to make sense of all the injustices and all the chaos. We try so desperately to make sense of it all but what if the answer lies not in our heads but in our hearts?

Here is a little something I have come to learn. Those thoughts lingering in our minds is what separates us from others, however, it is our hearts that connect us.  Our treasured ideologies and philosophies prejudice us against others. If someone doesn’t think the same as us, they are no longer hold value in our minds. Once can see how this exasperates our global problems.

The mind can take us only so far before it explodes, where the heart can lead us further down the path of acceptance and understanding. It’s a word many have forgotten – empathy. Feeling for others, walking in their shoes. This heart intelligence is what will save us.

This is not to say we should halt our quest for knowledge. On the contrary, we should expand our quest beyond what we think, but an empathetic and feeling intelligence. Feel into the knowledge to make it more holistic.

This world, this universe is a surreal place. Sometimes it feels like a Salvador Dali painting. Time is melting away. People and places are not what they seem. Nothing seems real. And sometimes the remedy is not understanding what is happening in the world, but understanding how we feel. These emotions connect us to others. Our human connectedness is how we make sense of a chaotic and crazy world and it is definitely how we can reshape it. We can’t do it alone, sequestered in our thoughts and ideology but we can do it but consciously connecting to others.

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