No Idea.

A few days ago I was driving across town when a utility truck pulled in front of me. On the back of the cabin in large black stuck-on letters was the starkest of confessions, No Idea. I laughed aloud, and thought ‘you can say that again brother’. It was a bold declaration of existential bewilderment. I don’t know about you, but growing older has in some ways been such a disappointment.

I imagined in my twenties that one day in the fullness of time, in the fullness of maturity, things would become a little clearer. Instead, to my dismay, the things that I’m uncertain about seem to have grown in direct proportion to my advancing years. At this rate I will enter old age confident only in the certainty of my own impending death – I’ll leave this world as bewildered as I entered it, my last words, ‘what the hell was that all about’, my eyes closing for the last time on the buzzing, blooming confusion that is human life.

I’ve gained some comfort from my Catholic spiritual tradition which describes the spiritual journey as one in which we travel through ‘a cloud of unknowing’. Like the confession of my utility truck driver, the cloud of unknowing points to the deep impenetratable mystery of life. If we can only embrace this mystery and not give way to despair or even worse to rigid fundamentalist formulations then we may actually as we grow older become truly humble, tolerant and compassionate.

Opening ourselves to mystery, humbly embracing the fact that we actually have little or no idea about the true nature of things softens us in a good way, creating within us kind hearts that refuse to judge or condemn.