#55. The Lightness of Not Knowing

The human head weighs roughly ten pounds. Some say the true number lies between five and eleven pounds, within which ten falls, so there's that. I don’t know how much of that exact weight is up for debate, but either way, the human head weighs more than Pacquito’s entire being. This I know to be true. Or do I?

I’ve been thinking about what I truly know versus what I only think I know—what I’ve read, overheard, absorbed. J often reminds me of this idea: we talk about drinking from a cup of tea we’ve never actually tasted. We form opinions about experiences we’ve never had.

If we were to list everything we know for certain—no conjecture, no secondhand information, only what we’ve seen with our own eyes, heard with our own ears, tasted with our own tea-tasting tongues—how long would that list really be?

Lately, I’ve been catching myself on the defensive. Guarded. This strange sense that if someone doesn’t believe what I believe, they must not be for me—or I’ll, at some point, discover they aren’t. Where did that even come from? This high-and-mighty weirdness. I’m not like this with my clients; they say all sorts of objectively wild things that I meet with love, hand to my heart on the exhale, clarity on the inhale. 

Okay, except for once, in group, when a (very) young father said he didn’t want his son wearing skirts for play because it would turn him eventually gay. A few others started murmuring their agreement, and I... kind of went off on them. Not my most enlightened art therapist moment—but whatever. We all learned something during those few minutes. Maybe.

Perhaps that’s part of it. Something in the air feels like it’s closing us in, like we’re suffocating ourselves with certainty, with the need to be right. (Should I just speak for myself here and drop the “we”?)

It’s interesting to be “parent” to an aging dog—one who’s often mistaken for a puppy and still acts like one, that is, when he's not momentarily struck down by his ancientness. Today, I laid my head upon his body—or more accurately, against it, since my head weighs more than he does, remember—and he just... let me. There was this sweet exchange, like he knew I needed it, or at the very least wanted it. Instead of running off to his bed to sleep for twenty hours, or begging two hours early for mealtime as he usually does, he just stayed. Still. Patient. Breath softening, his head turning toward mine. Letting me rest there. The remainder of our time together is so limited, so infinitely finite. 

It’s become almost irritating to notice how often I think I know something. How that false knowing breeds heightened and hot emotion—towards people, towards situations—and hardens into judgment. The way gossip trellises around the naves of our communities and quietly suffocates us. (Oops, I went plural again.)

All we really have or know is what’s right in front of us. Like the sky, we only truly know what’s right here; everything else is just rumor on the wind.

The Tao Te Ching reminds us:

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.

The general interpretation—one I agree with, despite my humanness suggesting otherwise—is that the knowers stay quiet because they know how words distort, how they can never hope to contain the vastness of ultimate truth. The speakers, on the other hand, speak to project an image of knowing, unaware of their own ignorance. Either way, humility is asked of us. To listen more, speak less. (I’ve got a card for that.)

So why do I feel compelled to have opinions on everything else? I’ve been the victim of this impulse, sure, but more often, the perpetrator.

Maybe I’ve just strayed too unwittingly far from the center—the center of myself, not necessarily politics (though maybe that, too).

And what’s the point of the center? To be held down and lifted all at once, grounded just enough to see and breathe clearly.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. I guess I’m trying to meet myself there—in the middle, where quick judgment softens and there’s room before and beyond right and wrong. (I’ve got a card for that one, too.)

I want to live in that room. It feels gentler. Lighter. Like the weight of a human head finally meeting the weight of a four-pound dog’s being.

As always, with love and thanks,

BROOKIE

P.S. The cards I've got for you: 

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