not-knowing

Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I knew beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. I thought how terrible the nights must have been in a time when men knew the things were there and were deadly. But no, that's wrong. If I knew they were there, I would have weapons against them, charms, prayers, some kind of alliance with forces equally strong but on my side. Knowing they were not there made me defenseless against them and perhaps more afraid.

It's okay to be honest about not knowing rather than spreading falsehood. While it is often said that honesty is the best policy, silence is the second best policy.

My confidence is in the idea that I may be wrong on this or that. No man in this life should ever have to bear the burden of perfection.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you were wrong? Maybe, you only saw your point of view and you never once put yourself in the other person's shoes. Maybe, walking away from the senseless drama and spiteful criticism isn't the best thing to do. Maybe, for just once in your life you could wear another person's confusion, pain or misunderstanding. Maybe, your future doesn't require explaining yourself or offering an explanation for your indifference, but your character and reputation does. What if one day you find out that you didn't have all the information you thought you did? What if you find out that your presence was needed for healing? What if you only knew half of it and the other half was just your fear and anger translating everything you experienced? What if you were wrong? What if the same thing happened to you?

Knowledge is too final. Not knowing lets you dream a little.

When a small group of people come together to relive the Salem witch hunts, God cries. For if anything is sorrowful to God, it is evil done in his name. When you find out you were not given the truth, how will you live with yourself?

I truly do not know, and that unnameable feeling that comes with not knowing: it must be worse than grief. It must.

It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head.

God wants us to humbly and sincerely ask him things. How often do you enjoy people talking about you without taking the time to get to know you?

Silence might be a shout for the truth. It might be the speech that someday, in its truest, most uncontaminated, unadulterated state, all will be revealed.

In your diary, you quoted old Jiko saying something about not-knowing, how not-knowing is the most intimate way, or did I just dream that?Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think maybe it's true, even though I don't really like uncertainty. I'd much rather 'know', but then again, not-knowing keeps all the possibilities open. It keeps all the worlds alive.

History has shown us time and time again that you don't have to know someone to love them with all your heart.

During the flames of controversy, opinions, mass disputes, conflict, and world news, sometimes the most precious, refreshing, peaceful words to hear amidst all the chaos are simply and humbly 'I don't know.

Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.

Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.

A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn't know.

Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child's relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don't know as much as we think we know.

To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.