In the bottomless well of my ignorance

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My inspiring, soulful blog friend Joyce Wycoff wrote  last month in a beautiful post titled, Love Letters to my life #8: The Joy of Being Unqualified, “I am grateful for my bottomless well of ignorance which gives me such splendid opportunities to learn.”

How divinely inspiring. To be grateful for my bottomless well of ignorance. How freeing.

In that bottomless well there are so many questions unasked, unanswered, unknown. So many questions that do not need answers, just the exploration. There are so many ideas to explore and so much learning to grow through the exploration without any need of finding the end of the thread that lead me down the path of discovery into the waters of life unlived.

I am trying on her words this morning. Wearing them like a veil of possibiity. Like a good luck charm.

Think about it.

No matter how many years add up to our limited time on earth, no matter how much wealth we have or have not accumulated, how many cars sit in our garage or how many designer handbags line our closet shelves, we all share this infinite capacity to learn, grow, evolve. We all experience this bottomless well of ignorance that can never be filled — not because we can’t fill it, but rather, because this big, beautiful, crazy, messed up world is full of things we cannot know, cannot fathom. We are alive in a universe of infinite proportions and we, mere humans, cannot divine all there is to fathom of the beauty and magnificence of this world before the adding up of our days expires into dust. How exciting!

I needed Joyce’s words this morning. Needed their sense of infinite possibility.

I opened my work email before coming to this page this morning. (I know. I know. What on earth was I thinking?) I opened my email and found a couple of items that need my attention and for a moment, in all their clamouring for answers I do not have, I felt frustration rise, confusion descend. Momentarily mired in that space of… how on earth do I respond to this?… I lost sight of my bottomless well of ignorance.

And then, I had the wonderful good fortune of going to read Joyce’s words, and I smiled, my heart opened up, the tension that had started to build in my shoulders at the thought I did not have readily available answers, eased.

No matter how many days I have tucked under my belt, which seems to be ever expanding with time’s girth, I don’t have to have ‘the answers’. I just have to be willing to experience the journey of exploring what I do not know. I just need to be willing to dive deep into the bottomless well of my ignorance to explore what is possible when I don’t assume it is answers I’m searching for, it’s the experience.

In that space of unknown questions infinitely lurking behind ready to pick off the shelf answers, I choose to heed the invitation to stay open to the infinity of the unknown, letting my curiosity pull me into exploring the possibility that clarity will embrace me when I stop fighting the confusion of not knowing. Reveling in not having answers, I take this journey, fully unqualified, savouring my lack of travelling finesse.  How divine.

I am grateful this morning for my bottomless well of ignorance. That beautiful, dark, secret-filled place where I am free to dive deeply into what lies beneath the surface of living life intentionally doing what I am supposed to do. Letting go of ‘supposed to’ or should, I untether my spirit and soar into the depths of my heart beating wildly in time to the rhythms of what cannot be divined in the light of day and can only be discovered when I let go of swimming with my feet firmly planted on the ground.

______________________

Thank you Joyce for reminding me to be grateful for all there is to discover when I let go of having to know the answers!

 

6 thoughts on “In the bottomless well of my ignorance”

  2. The least used and most appropriate answer to so many questions we are asked is: I don’t know, but I’ll find out. If we had all the answers we would be like a Google-machine, ‘point-click-result’. People who don’t know, people who have a need, people who are uncertain seek answers – and they come to their ‘guru’. Might be you, might be me, might be the person we go to when we are stumped for an answer or for understanding. We work it through. Dialogue is usually key – asking them questions is often where we find it because the questions people ask most are not the questions which produce the answers they need. We are all a problem in search of a solution. And some days we all feel like idiots in search of our village …

    But, most days, we thoughtfully ask+answer, probe+probe some more – and if we keep digging through all the horshe-shite we’ll find there is a pony in there somewhere …

    m

    p.s. write first, check email after … very important rule

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    • haha! Good rule Mark! 🙂

      Probing is important. Even ponies can’t survive under the horshe-shite! 🙂 (not exactly sure what that means but it’s making me smile so I’m going to live with it as my answer! 🙂 )

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