From Ursula K. Le Guin's

From Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness:

“The unknown,” said Faxe’s soft voice in the forest, “the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion….Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, predictable, inevitable - the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?”

“That we shall die.”

“Yes. There’s really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer….The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”

The emphasis is mine. Much of my younger life had been about finding answers in all shapes and sizes. I piled on knowledge and trivia like they were an all you can eat buffet. It didn’t take long for me to realize I wasn’t the smartest guy and that I had meager limits to what I could understand. That’s when I thought stuff like LSD might help me transcend those limits and hold bigger thoughts. It didn’t do what I had hoped it would do. Then I read Paul Bowles’ 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky and my thinking began proceeding in the opposite direction. He had opened my mind to reducing the world to its bare elements. His novels and short stories set me on the path away from the buffet towards this notion of a pure truth, the one truth. I’m paraphrasing Gore Vidal here but “I wanted to glimpse what lies behind the sheltering sky.”

I think my thinking has taken the next step with Le Guin’s novel. Hopefully this isn’t too much doublethink but it seems like “ignorance is freedom.” I can never know what will happen or even what has happened. The event is either outside of my senses, or it has been mauled by my senses as I perceived it. It seems the best I can hope for is to experience the present with a vigor and hearty appreciation. This opens up a different can of worms for me as what about personal responsibility if you are focused on the moment? It’s like you are living without consequences for your actions.

Does anyone know what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives?