You know?
It's funny, that 'you know' is such a common phrase. How much do we really know, as a people? As a culture? How about in our own heads? How much do we know about the Universe or the Stars or Unicorns or The Things That Be, whatever they are or aren't. We know very little about how things are or how they came to be. Faith and other religious definitions have tried to overcompensate for this vast misguided chasm of misinformation. I can't claim to have knowledge of How Things Are or How They Should Be or Why They Are As They Are. I don't have any more answers than I used to. I just know that I don't know, and to me, that's all the difference. I'm not afraid any longer. It's amazing, the switch you feel when you realize that it doesn't mean anything will hurt you, curse you, strike you down from above if you admit that you do not know. Taking the leap is a great, liberating stride for independence.
I understand the people who prefer to be lulled to sleep by the story of society. I feel for them, I empathize. I do not pity or scorn, judge, deny, label, condescend to those who just can't open up beyond their limited perception. The trouble with these sorts of people, the people who tell you How You Should Be or What You Should Do or The Way Things Work find comfort in their nonsense, in their false sense of security. It makes the bad things that Bump in the night keep their heads down and toes together, knock-kneed and shy and retracting their claws. It's an ounce of control, that we might convince some great Deity to be kind to us if only we are Good Enough and follow the Right Way, the Way to Him, the Great and Powerful Reprieve from Nature. But we are not Nature's exception, we are no different from the soup be emerged from. We have no other matter, we have not created any life beyond that which was already here. There is no distinction from anything that can harm you, there is no Hope or a Savior.
Some people assume that this acceptance of futility means an acceptance of unhappiness. Not so. There is no misery in knowing, inconsequentially, that you are going to die. There is nothing so beautiful and perfect and serene as knowing that You are nothing more than a smudge of dust upon the Earth. We accept this as truth, that this is a lowly place in life. Smudges of dust have no more consequence than a single drop in the ocean. We think that accepting this means that there is no point to BEING that smudge or BEING that drop. I may be singular and remote and inconsequential, but my place in this world is beautiful and I can appreciate that and be grateful that that's all I have.
This is the Knowledge that comforts me, knowing that I can be small AND special AND ignored AND desired AND mortal AND fine with the concept of mortality. But I didn't always think this way. There were times, places when I couldn't say the things I can know say so assuredly. I did not always KNOW. There were times I thought I knew, and times I knew I didn't know... and there may yet be times I find that all I KNOW is lacking. There may be some higher understanding I'm not privy to yet, but that is another time and another story.
This is how I came to know that I know nothing, and that knowing that was knowing everything.
you are coming to know your place; knowing that, to "rest in the Lord" is not just a phrase but the realization that you ARE and are known, and can be confident in that and go on being and doing what you are meant to be in the grand scheme of things [which, fortunately, is not your responsibility]. Ironically, your ancestor, Millard Fillmore, was a biggie in what was called the Know Nothing Party of 1840s.
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