Not knowing. A beautiful way to live.
Right now
I am sitting here with 4 journals to my left. Four journals from four different chapters of my life. All together, are they a book? A series of books? They are me. They are my life in pen on paper. I sat at the kitchen table and read through them and got lost in time and space. I was there. I was there.
My first known journal is from 1994. My sister gave it to me as a high school graduation present. She knows me so well. I have it here. It’s full of song lyrics, winnie the pooh quotes and deep, deep thoughts. It’s full of me playing with words and language. It’s full of me processing my life: from a road trip after my senior year of high school to my first boyfriend. It’s full of entries from 1994-5 and then filled in with entries in all the blanks spaces from 1999. Here’s one that jumped out at me as my allotted time to work on this was coming to a close. I needed to jump in, choose and share. Here we go. Join me.
January 24, 1999
It is the pages stuck into the bind
That show the overflow, the extras, the added, the little things as we like to call them that are actually the big things, deemed worthy by a second’s thought that turns into a later appreciation and recollection of who were were just then, as we thought to save a line, a page, a memory, a time.
That can’t escape thoughts because they’re there to disrupt the clean lines of pages lying together in their flat parallel lives, ornamented by worn and torn touch. It is the pages that make. That make. That make me realize that looking at the almost filled pages of this book are the times that I know I have lived. And now I revisit, remind, smile, fill in voids of questions and laugh at the answers I thought I knew all along and realize I’ll never know — not knowing. A beautiful way to live. — in the yes, mysteries of this world — a walking talking interrogation of trees, of rooftops looming, of sidewalks staring, of faces feeling. Just seeing is reason enough for me. And the way each of us sees is even more of a reason.
Right now
Ahhhhh. I want to go hug her. Me. I think I was 22 without stopping to do the math. I know so much now about not knowing. So much that I now know I know nothing. And she knew so much. She knew. She just knew. It was in her way of being.
Let’s try it together
I invite you to join me
To embrace the not knowing
The unknown
It’s thrilling to be both excited and scared
That’s exactly how I feel
It’s a beautiful way to live