Mysteries of the Universe: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Mysteries (Part II)
When we’re children, everything is a mystery. Childhood is definitionally mysterious because kids have little experience or perspective to garner much wealth of knowledge yet. Children tend to be marvelous at sitting comfortably with mystery; they often bring intense curiosity, lack preconception, and bring an orientation of experiment to the world. One of the greatest gifts of becoming a parent is the opportunity to encounter the world anew—you get to re-experience the miracle of caterpillars and avocadoes and how frightening shifting clouds can be. And when you get to be the parent, you have the gift of marrying your experience with childlike wonder because, at some point, most of us learn to blunt our wonder. Mark Twain wrote,
“We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.”1
We tend to trade mystery for experience, but I can’t help but feel that this is a false dichotomy. As a child, I had the opportunity to participate in one of our culture’s pervasive mystery myths: Santa Claus. This dude encompasses mysteries galore from his random, abundant generosity to the practical execution of his delivery system. I was seven when I pieced together the truth that Santa was [spoiler alert!] not real. When I was eight, I became concerned with the state of my older brother’s dignity when I realized that he hadn’t yet figured it out. So I told him. (I know, I’m a jerk. But seriously, he was in fouth grade and in imminent danger of embarrassing himself.) I remember sitting on the stairs in our home and I’ll never forget how crushed he was. We made a plan to keep our knowledge a secret because our father would be devastated to learn that we knew. The secret got out anyway (I’m not pointing fingers but bear in mind that some of us had already kept the secret for over a year). Our father was terribly disappointed, but he was able to focus his Santa glee on our much younger sister. When my sister ate the fruit of Santa knowledge some years later, our father was truly devastated and said that he would have to wait until he had grandkids until Christmas felt like Christmas again.
My father’s enjoyment of Christmas was compromised by the fact that there was no one left to engage the mystery. And my father isn’t alone; I’ve witnessed other adults indulging in Santa mania to keep the secret from children, brow-beating each other at the first hint of anyone spoiling the mystery with truth. The Santa myth always struck me as not only preposterously silly, but damaging to the development of a trust bond:
You can trust me implicitly, darling child. Except for that one long-con practical joke about the chubby dude with flying mammals.
When I had my own children, my husband and I were on the same page about Santa: we would not lie to our kids. But that first year, it became clear that there was something to the mystery and wonder embodied by Santa and I didn’t want my kid to miss out. So we told our kiddos that Santa is a wonderful story we tell every year; so wonderful that most people—even grownups—love to pretend he’s real. My kids grasped that right away because their day-to-day lives were steeped in this kind of make-believe. As far as they were concerned, if lots of people wanted to get in on the fun, the more the merrier. Since I was worried about how I had spoiled the fun for my poor brother, I told my kids that it’s not our place to tell other people what to believe; that everyone has the choice of joining the make-believe or not. But it’s not our place to comment on their choice. It worked better than I had hoped. My kids still experienced the joy and wonder of Santa, neither of them ever spoiled it for anyone else, and I never lied to them about it. When Jane was six, she was so enthusiastic about Santa that I worried that she didn’t remember the deal about him. I pulled her aside after visiting Santa one night and said, I’m glad you’re having so much fun—but you do remember this is make-believe, right? Jane looked me square in the eye and said, Yes, of course. Do you remember that you’re not supposed to comment on my choice to pretend?
Touché, Jane.
I feel like we navigated SantaGate successfully for our own family, but it highlights a conundrum I keep coming back to in my life: can mystery and knowledge coexist? It’s a vicious cycle. Humans are inspired by mystery to seek knowledge, but once they hold the knowledge, they crave mystery. Is there a way to have both? I’ve always been a chick who wants to have her cake and eat it too—I never understood the value of cake you can’t eat. Is there a way to navigate between the two, as I did with my kiddos on the Santa situation? I consulted my buddy, Plato, and he had some interesting things to say. In his allegory, “The Cave,” he has Socrates tell this awesome story about people who live in a cave. They’re chained up without knowing it so that they can’t move their heads to see each other or anything other than what is directly in front of them. There is firelight behind them which projects shadows onto the wall in front of them. Given that they cannot move to change their perspective, these people come to believe that the shadows they see are real objects and people. But they are not real. The shadows are merely a projection, an image of the thing/person itself. The story goes on to imagine that one person is freed and comes to see the real things and the fire behind projecting them. At first the firelight is overwhelming, but as their eyes adjust, curiosity drives the person out of the cave and into the world. The person becomes blinded by the light of the sun and again needs time to adjust. But when their eyes are adjusted, for the very first time, the person can see things as they truly are.
…this capacity in every soul, this instrument by means of which each person learns, is like an eye which can only be turned away from the darkness and towards the light by turning the whole body. The entire soul has to turn with it, away from what is coming to be, until it is able to bear the sight of what is, and in particular the brightest part of it. This is the part we call the good…Education, then, would be the art of directing this instrument, of finding the easiest and most effective way of turning it round.”2
Now this educated Truth-finder has a choice to make. They can either stay in the world, basking in the sunshine, or they can go back to the cave. (Red pill or blue pill, Neo?) Plato argues that the philosopher is that person who, attaining Truth, chooses to return to the cave. It’s a tough row to hoe; the philosopher’s poor eyes are going to be super strained, what with always having to adjust between the dark and the light, but it is the philosopher’s imperative to bring Truth back to the cave because that is the only thing to help break the chains of the people trapped there. Surely, the sharing of Truth is a sacred duty in service to humanity. But here’s the thing that fascinates me: neither extreme of the mystery/knowledge continuum nourishes humanity without counterbalance from the other extreme. Truth must encompass knowledge along with mystery and wonder. Thomas Aquinas wrote,
“Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.”3
Poets and philosophers are ordained to honor both knowledge and mystery. I’m not going to quibble about the specific job descriptions of poets and philosophers; we’re not talking literal job descriptions, here. They don’t have to understand iambic pentameter or drink hemlock. Elon Musk is a poet/philosopher and so were Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Poets and philosophers are those among us that beat the path between knowledge and mystery and as such, bear the responsibility of sharing the Truth they discover with the rest of humanity. That description could fit Truth-seekers in any field of expertise; the real crux of the job is the ability to traverse the terrain in and out of the cave, between mystery and knowledge, focused on the betterment of the human condition. It can be an uncomfortable position, to live life in the space between these two apparent dichotomies, but as members of the most educated population the world has ever seen, we have a responsibility to take some steps toward the path. Mary Oliver, a (literal) poet whose work makes my soul feel good, leads by example in her poem, “Mysteries, Yes”:4
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
What do you think? Do you try to navigate between mystery and knowledge? Are you successful? Leave a comment below or reach out on Facebook or Instagram to share your thoughts. As for me, I respectfully disagree with Mark Twain. I don’t think we must inherently lose mystery in order to gain knowledge. Our capacity for wonder and our thirst for knowledge are both integral to our humanity. And I agree with Oliver. I’m wary of those who too stridently shout that they have the answers because that’s likely a warning that they don’t fully appreciate the human need for awe.
Keep chasing wonder, even when our knowledge solves the mystery. Let’s laugh in astonishment and bow our heads—there is always more to revere.
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Notes:
Artwork: Kuala by Othebo is licensed under CC0 Creative Commons.
1) Twain, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clements). A Tramp Abroad. Penguin Books, 1997. 318
2) Plato, Griffith, Tom, translator. “Book 7.” The Republic, edited by G. R. F. Ferrari. Cambridge University Press, 2000. 224.
3) Aquinas, Thomas and John Patrick Rowan“Lecture 3.” Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Henry Regnery Company, 1961.
4) Oliver, Mary. “Mysteries, Yes.” Evidence: Poems. Beacon Press, 2009.