When pondering the point of today’s post, I couldn’t help but feel for the families of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. For 239 people to be gone… instantly… to have no idea what happened or where they are… to be completely unaware… there are few things more significant to focus on this day. Then it donned on me what’s so troubling… and where so much of our discomfort currently, often lies.
In the modern “I Era” — meaning, the age of all things “I” — the internet, iPhones, and an abundant focus on self — we take pride in knowing everything. Everything.
If you don’t know the answer, Google it.
If you can’t figure something out, look it up.
If you want to know what someone or something looks like, find their pic; it will be on the worldwide web somewhere.
In other words, we never have to go without knowing. We think and feel like we know — and can know — it all.
But we don’t.
I paused last week coming across a brief nugget of truth, buried within a traditional passage read at many marriage ceremonies. Embedded within the concept of what love is and what it’s not, is this tiny little line that speaks of human knowledge, ability, and also, limitation. It reads: “When the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.”
It goes on to say: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully…”
My point is that even as we grow, we still only “know in part.” We don’t know it all. And yet when mysteries linger — such as the intriguing whereabouts of Flight MH370 — our “I Era” bubbles assuming we know and are capable of knowing are quickly pierced. We come face to face with the reality of the limitations of our knowledge.
Hence, I must ask: where else is our knowledge limited? And where else do we ignorantly assume we know that of which we are incapable?
… on global warming…
… on cloning…
… on what will happen next in the Middle East…
… on motives of individuals…
… on the extent certain policies impact the economy forever…
… on when and why nations cease to exist…
I am not attempting to be disrespectful or partisan in any way, friends. I am simply asking the question. My sense is that many are unwilling to ask the question. Even more so, I believe we are often unwilling to acknowledge that we don’t — and can’t — know it all. The unknowing makes us uncomfortable.
God bless the families of those aboard that fateful flight. May they know something more soon.
Respectfully,
AR