Sometimes it’s ok for ignorance to be bliss
Coping with loss by accepting how little we know
I begin with two statements:
1. what we believe is different from what we know.
2. What we know is minuscule compared with what we don’t know.
What we believe is different from what we know.
Philosophers since before Socrates have tried to unpick belief vs. knowledge. Perhaps the most famous distillation comes from Descartes who finally declared that the only thing he could definitively know was his own sentience:
I think, therefore I am.
Everything else was unknowable and subject only to varying intensities of belief. Beyond the philosophers, the difference between knowledge and belief can be easily explained. You can know that this cookie is 150 calories but can only believe it is the most delicious cookie ever cooked.
What we know is minuscule compared with what we don’t know.
This statement imparts how ignorant we are about nearly everything.
Consider the things that make us who we are:
We know what an emotion is, but can you isolate exactly where love lives in your body?
We know that neurons and synapses are involved in memory, but how can a particular song on the radio instantly impact so many distinct parts of your body?
Which part of the hippocampus holds nostalgia?
Go to your high school reunion and see a friend you haven’t laid eyes on in 30 years. Nearly everything you observe when you see them is made up cells that didn’t exist 30 years ago — let alone 30 days ago- and yet you immediately know them and they know you. What is the “essence” of them that you still know so well, if all the physical parts of the body have been replaced?
Does this all prove we have a soul? And if so, where is it, exactly? Can you see the soul under a microscope?
What we know is minuscule compared with what we don’t know.
Consider what we know today compared to our recent past:
Your great-grandparents never knew that the cells of their body were filled with DNA.
Your great-great-grandparents didn’t know that cells existed.
And what did your great-great-great-great-grandparents know about the body? That all human biology is controlled by the four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. (It isn’t)
The biology of the human body hasn’t materially changed in 40,000 years; yet our knowledge of how the body works is largely based on discoveries made in the past 100 years. Imagine what we will know in another 100 years. Or in another 40,000 years.
So I say it again: What we know today is hopelessly minuscule compared to what we don’t know.
Ethereality
I don’t work for a traditional bricks and mortar company. We don’t have a main office where we all gather every day. We don’t have cubicles or conferences rooms, reception desk or water cooler. Instead, we work out of 240 home offices in 32 states and 5 countries.
We often get asked if working remotely is an impediment to building community as a team. Quite the opposite. Using all the latest tools of technology, I have never worked with a better connected or closer-knit group of people. (We do see each other in person various times of the year for company meetings and whatnot.)
By and large, how we communicate is not physical. Our conversations happen over the phone, webcams, email, or most often, via online chat.
All our forms of communication require technology to send electronic pulses through the ether.
We are not a physical office, nor are we a virtual office. We are an ethereal office.
Of all the ethereal tools at our disposal, the most ubiquitous is Slack, the online chat application. Slack allows you to send an instant message to a single coworker, participate in a group chat with a few coworkers, or even broadcast a message to everyone in the company.
Each of us has a unique username or “handle”, prefixed with an @ sign. My Slack handle, for instance, is the very original @Andrew R.
If someone at the company wants to reach me, all they need to do is type @Andrew R into Slack and they get in touch with me through the ether. The same goes for every other member of our team.
Of all the different slack handles at our company, there is only one that was only two letters: @Kj
Our company has many Chrises, a Christine, a Christina, a Christy and even a Krys. There was only one Kjersten. So distinctive was the spelling of her Minnesota Swedish name, that over time it was lovingly reduced to the first two letters only. Henceforth, in Slack and everywhere else, she was known to us not as Kjersten, but simply as Kj (pronounced “Kay-jay.”)
Kj was a leader and a friend. Kj was fun and firm, warm and direct, thoughtful and spontaneous. To know Kj was to love Kj.
And in our ethereal company, the most direct link was via her Slack handle. Type @Kj a question and without fail you would hear back with help.
@Kj are you there? Yep- what’s up?
@Kj can you answer this question? Sure thing just gimme a second.
@Kj why are they being so difficult? They are just stressed, let me talk them down.
On and on and on.
Tragically, unexpectedly, unfairly, the warm, human Kj died. More than half a lifetime too soon. Our ethereal team went into very real mourning. That’s all I want to say.
@Kj are you there?
Mourning takes many forms. Some need to mourn in groups. Some find solace mourning with one or two loved ones.
I mostly mourn alone.
Five days after we lost Kj, I found myself on a long solitary walk through the wooded parks around my hometown of Portland, Oregon. My mind was filled with thoughts of her.
Such a spirit.
How could it be that this spirit was, in an instant, erased? This was completely illogical. This was completely unacceptable.
When I typed “@Kj” into Slack she would always answer. What would happen if I tried that now? I’m a totally rational person. I knew there would be no answer if I typed @Kj into the ether. I didn’t try. I kept walking.
What the heck is ether anyway?
I think of it as the space around us that isn’t solid matter. You might think of it as “the air” but of course air is filled with lots of things other than oxygen and nitrogen.
Songs from your youth bounce around in the ether. The smell of those 150 calorie cookies waft in the ether. The breeze that rustles your kid’s hair moves through the ether. The afternoon light creating sparkles on the pond comes through the ether.
The space where our company communicates is also ether: we fill it with countless little pulses of electricity.
Ether may be invisible, but it is absolutely packed.
Is it possible that when someone dies, that their non-corporeal being joins the ether? Do we know that it does?
Do we know that it doesn’t?
The only thing Descartes knew for certain was that he thinks. Where do those thoughts go after you die? Can you see thoughts under a microscope?
What we know is minuscule compared with what we don’t know
The future non-existence of my body is already a certainty, so anything of me that existed without that would have to be non-physical. What could that be? Could it, after all, be this miraculous, undefinable consciousness that I have?
Bryan Magee, English philosopher, in Ultimate Questions (2016)
Bryan Magee died a few months ago. Does he continue to exist in the ether?
What we believe is different from what we know.
I don’t want to believe Kj is gone. But I know she is. Or in Magee’s words, I know the “non-existence” of her physical form is a “certainty.” But what about her “miraculous, undefinable consciousness?”
What do I believe about her ethereal existence?
@Kj are you there?
After several hours of walking in silence, I emerged from the woods at the entrance of the Portland Japanese Garden.
I strolled along the peaceful paths and pondered the ether. If @Kj’s miraculous, undefinable consciousness was somewhere in that crowded ether, could I reach her?
Off on a side trail, tucked away from the main path, I arrived at my favorite hidden nook of the garden. A single bamboo bench, a trickling waterfall, moss-covered rocks, a tiny pool. Not another person in sight. I sat there, closed my eyes, and decided to send a message to @Kj through the ether.
On the spectrum from Totally Rational to Deeply Woo-woo, I am about to head on over to the Woo-woo side. This is done without apology. We can all use a little woo-woo from time to time.
Some call it praying. Some call it communing with the unknown. Some call it deep reflection. Whatever you call it, here’s exactly what I did: I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, conjured “@Kj” in my heart and sent out a message. The message had no words, questions or entreaties. The message my heart sent to @Kj was simply love. Nothing else.
Eyes still closed, I considered the nature of ether. If sound and light and wind are also ethereal, perhaps, I could use them to amplify my message.
I sent the message of love to @Kj along the gently burbling sound waves of the water.
Far in the distance I heard a train whistle. I sent the message to @Kj along the train whistle and imagined it lofting miles into the air.
A breeze caught my cheek. I sent my message along the breeze, like dandelion seeds, to join up with the atmosphere and continue its breezy travels.
Who knows where my message went?
And then I sat very quietly and waited.
I waited for a response.
China, 300 BCE
Class: Introduction to Philosophy
Instructor: Chaung-Tzu
Monday
Chuang-Tzu:
There is being.
There is non-being.
There is a not-yet-beginning-to-be-non-being.
There is a not-yet-beginning-to-be-a-not-yet-beginning-to-be-non-being.
Suddenly, there is being and non-being.
But between this being and non-being,
I really don’t know which is being and which is non-being.
Chaung-Tzu:
Any questions?
Students:
Yes, many questions. All the questions!
Chaung-Tzu:
Good.
What we know is minuscule compared with what we don’t know.
Chaung-Tzu understood this 2,400 years ago. Despite gargantuan advances in science and thought in the past two and a half millennia — we still know so very little.
Kj is physically gone from the planet. That we know. But is @Kj still out there in the ether? Is she, in Chaung-Tzu’s parlance, somewhere between being and non-being?
I waited in silence by my small waterfall, hoping to get a message back from @Kj. After a moment, I imagined my heart filling up. Ah! Could this be the reply? Had she gotten in touch?
Oh…but then my Totally Rational Brain reasserted itself.
“Okay. Enough with the woo-woo,” it seemed to say. “You totally just invented that feeling in your heart, Dude. You aren’t fooling anyone.”
I hate my brain sometimes.
And I wanted to believe, so I took a different tack. If I had sent my message out into the ether — through sounds and breezes — maybe that’s how a message would return to me.
I continued my slow walk through the Japanese Garden. I opened all my senses. I focused on breezes, sounds, smells, light, color. @Kj are you there?
Nothing.
I went to the Garden’s little cafe and ordered some tea. I listened to the quiet conversations around me. I smelled the earthy matcha in my teacup. I felt the warm steam from the teapot on my face.
Nothing.
I started to feel rather silly. I paid up and left.
The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.Mary Oliver, from Angels
I ducked into the Garden’s small gift shop. A few people were in there poking around, including a man who appeared to have a significant speech impairment. He talked loudly and haltingly. I couldn’t make out a word he was saying.
In my brain, his unusual language blended into background soundtrack of the store. I lingered over some ceramics and scarves for several minutes.
The man’s verbalizations continued. He was friendly sounding enough, I just couldn’t make out what he was saying. I looked at some postcards. I wandered over to the jewelry.
It was then, quite unexpectedly, that the man’s voice changed for a moment and he said, clear as bell:
“LOVE IS NOT SMALL”
…and then he immediately returned to his otherworldly language.
I stopped short.
Did he just say Love Is Not Small? Or did I imagine it?
I recalled the message I had sent out into the ether to @Kj. I had sent, simply, love.
Was this her response through the ether: Love is Not Small?
In that moment, even my Totally Rational Brain chose not to intervene.
Based on the facts we know today, there is no way to prove that sending a mental prayer out into the ether would result in a message back through another human.
What we know is minuscule compared with what we don’t know.
Five generations ago, our ancestors believed human biology was governed by the four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
What we believe is different from what we know.
What do I know?
Was I able to communicate with @Kj? I don’t know
Was @Kj able to communicate with me? I don’t know
What do I believe?
.
.
.
.
I believe that Love is Not Small.
❤ @Kj
