#158 Who Knows What Comes Next?

There are so many unknowns in life, the most simple being ‘what comes next’. Who can answer that question? Who can tell where exactly we are in this cosmic dust? And how do we make meaning of something we barely know? Or clearly don’t know. This episode is like scrambled eggs - so enjoy the mess. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Lucid Us podcast where I explore everything because I believe everything is connected to everything else. And also because I believe in the infinite unbounded potential within each of us. Part of that infinite potential is not knowing. Not knowing what to do, not knowing what to say. Not knowing what's next. Sometimes not even knowing what really happened in the past. So much of my experience here has been not knowing. There's such an interesting irony in that. Capable of so much. And yet we know so little. And we could speak about this intellectually. What we know about science or hard facts. But we could also speak of it very simply. None of us know what the next moment will bring. There's no one, no one I know that knows what the next moment will bring. So simple. Think of all that you know. All that you could study. All that you could learn. All that you could nearly perfect. And you will never know something as simple and basic as what the next moment will bring. What the next moment will bring. Nor will we always know what to say. What to say when someone is confused or lost or hurting. Something so simple as what to say or what to do. What to do when we're lost when we're hurting. So many unknowns. How to live a life of not knowing. The more simple my lessons in life become. So simple, in fact, that I don't know. I don't know how to do them. I don't know how to solve them. I don't know how to answer them. I don't know how to live them or be them. How do I connect with another human being? Connect soulfully, purely, clearly, intimately, beautifully, truly, kindly, healthfully. And that's just one human being. Imagine being able to do that with many. Each one will be so different from the others. So simple to truly deeply connect with another human being. Or that I could easily learn if it didn't. And the older I get, the more mysterious it seems. The more. No matter how long you live, you there's not enough time. And yet we waste so much time. So much time wasted. No matter how much time we have. And it's wasted. And what we need is more time. More time to simply simply be with time in time to know it as both an instantaneous blossoming and a flow. And a truth and a riddle. And you can't go forward. And you can't even be where you are. Because it's always moving. There's always emotion. Some might say it's a line, some might say it's a blossoming. Some might say it's a river. I think if you could ever truly be in time. But to be out of time is also to be out of space. That as long as you're inhabiting space, you're also inhabiting time. Which means the closest you can come is to be in motion. Let there be motion. Let there be motion in our lives, in our minds, in our hearts, in our bodies, in our relationships, in our connections. In our love, in our friendships, in our romances, in our living and our dying, let there be motion. I heard an interesting quote recently. Something along the lines, if you know where it is, you don't know how fast it's going. Meaning, if you're going to pin something down so you know where it is, then you don't know its motion. Let there be motion. And if there's motion, then you don't know where it is. There's so much we don't know. There's so much not knowing in life. So much not knowing. We'll never know what's next. Brilliant as any computer mind. And we'll never know what's next. There may be some gifted minds out there who catch glimpses of time that is past or future, or even very near the present, but no one knows. I have built my life on the premise that I know what will happen next. I built a life where I believe I'll get up tomorrow and I'll have a job and I'll pay my bills and I'll have my hobbies and I'll water my plants and do all the things and that is a false premise. I recently saw a picture of I saw a few images. One was of the destruction after World War II in Poland. Literally, there was not a building left for anywhere. I mean it the whole seemed like the whole country was just razed. There was one lone person sort of walking down what might have been a street at one point. And then I saw something not so dissimilar to that was going on today. I don't remember if it was in Iran or Lebanon, and someone was just slowly rifling through this pile of rubble that was once their home. In an instant. So lucky to have what I have. My heart aches for the people who don't. And I know that that has been me at times. And the loss of home, of family, the loss of the ability to pretend. And we will never know. Never know. I started this podcast due to an unease, an unease, an unsettlement, an unsettled unease in me that I cannot name, I cannot find, I cannot describe, I don't understand. How do I help myself? How do you solve or answer what you can't even speak, understand, or know? There's so much not knowing. The simple, basic knowing of what will happen next. I remember when my father had Alzheimer's, and near the end, I wrote, I wonder if I could find it. I did a blog post and I called it walking blind. And I was thinking about how I was, I could feel myself walking blindly into each next moment with my father, not understanding how it was going to end, but I could feel the ending was coming. And I wanted to know when it was gonna happen and how it would happen. And of course, there was no knowing. I knew I had to walk blindly into each moment that that is the story of any life. And just reflecting on the courage that it takes to walk blindly into the next moment of life. Period. Just that takes a lot of courage to walk blindly into the next moment and to do it aware that it is happening, no longer blinding ourselves with the premise that we actually think we know what's going to happen, but to walk blindly into the next moment, aware that we don't know. And then to do that with someone who is, who is ill, who is struggling, who is dying, who is whatever, where where the unknown is even more apparent. There's a whole nother level of courage in that. And to do that with yourself. When you're having moments where you're struggling, you're you're in ill health, you're dying, you know, you're whatever the you're going through great loss. You know, to walk with yourself, knowing that you're blind to the next moment. I want to repeat those words. They bring up a great deal of emotion for me. To walk with yourself blindly into each moment, knowing you don't know, but willing to walk with yourself all the way, all the way home. And maybe if you're lucky enough while you're doing that, you'll find that there's a hand nearby. And you can hold someone else's hand while they too walk blindly into the next moment. And maybe there's another hand, and there are two hands to hold, and they have other hands. Maybe there's a hand resting on your shoulder. As Ram Das so beautifully says, we are all children walking each other home. So beautiful, so true, and we are all so blind to the next moment, and as children, as children show us in their joy and in their play, and in their curiosity and their wonder, we don't need to know to retain that childhood wonder and innocence and joy and curiosity, while also maturing the understanding that we don't know. It feels like being able to hold both of those, both the maturity of not knowing, and the childhood wonder. Feels balanced to me. So I'm holding equal weights in each hand. So precious. I don't think life is precious. I think our time is precious. I think life is pretty hardy and knows exactly what it's doing. I think time is precious. Scrambling up all this stuff and saying.