Austin Kleon had a good post this week on curiosity and the absence of certainty. And, I agree with Austin that Ravelli’s writing also applies to art.
Absence of certainty, awareness of ignorance
The physicist Carlo Rovelli has a beautiful way of talking about science in terms of ignorance and curiosity.
In Helgoland: Making Sense of Quantum Revolution, he writes:
I believe that one of the greatest mistakes made by human beings is to want certainties when trying to understand something. The search for knowledge is not nourished by certainty: it is nourished by a radical absence of certainty. Thanks to the acute awareness of our ignorance, we are open to doubt and can continue to learn and to learn better. This has always been the strength of scientific thinking—thinking born of curiosity, revolt, change.
A walk is, in a sense, the smallest sort of journey we can ever undertake. It stands in relation to a typical holiday as a bonsai tree does to a forest.
But even if it is only an eight-minute interlude around the block or a few moments in a nearby park, a walk is already a journey in which many of the grander themes of travel are present.
The need to go for a walk begins from the same place as the longing to take off to another country: with a desire to restart our minds. We sometimes cannot work it all out by staying rooted in one place. We have stared at the screen too long, we have been bumping into the same inner obstacles without progress, we have grown claustrophobic with ourselves.
With the pandemic, the current and coming fires in California, national and state politics, crime statistics and collapsing buildings, I tend to walk (not run) into each morning’s news and my to-do list. But I must admit – the weather DOES make a difference. Maybe because life IS so complicated, when I find myself in the middle of a beautiful summer day… lately I SEE it.
I notice. I stop. I look. This has been going on for a couple of weeks so I found the School of Life essay below interesting.
Imagine a sunny day, one in which many people, on walking out of the house for the first time, will note a particular brightness to the light, and a balminess to the air, which may trigger a surge of hope and a willingness to look at familiar problems with renewed determination.
The pleasure that can be triggered by good weather is, at one level, absurd. Gratitude for the sun belongs to a category of satisfaction that feels humiliatingly simple. It’s tempting to deny the significance of the weather altogether – especially for philosophers – and to focus instead on more substantial political and economic issues, by which the course of our lives is overwhelmingly determined. We should surely be able to rise above minor frustrations like eleven days of rain and a persistent glacial wind from the north.
But in reality, our behaviour reveals a devotion to a simple, even simplistic, truth: our faith in ourselves and our prospects is frequently determined by nothing grander than the number of photons of light in the sky and degrees of warmth in the air. Heat, pleasant breezes, intense sunlight and fresh flowers may play a critical role in encouraging us not to give up on things.
We in the US are celebrating a new year starting in June! And as Jonathan Fields writes below, may we come into this new time thankful for the invitation… Big Hug! Vicki
I Come to This Year
I come to this year Awakening To the truth of life My life Equipped to see Beyond the haze Of illusion Who I am Who I am not Who I yearn to be
I come to this year Questioning Whether being that person Truly holds the seeds Of more grace Or serves to distract From the possibility that Who I was meant to be Is who I’ve always been And that my path is not To become But to allow The me That has always stood Off to the side To take its seat At the table of my life
I come to this year Leaning toward a path Yet mindful that The Universe Wise old soul May have plans Possibilities unforeseen That hold within them The gift of serendipity Joys undiscoverable When blinded By rote.
I come to this year Accompanied by The lines of the play This life has written Indelibly inked Acutely human Unwilling, still To confine The story yet to be told To the breadth and depth Of the story already lived
I come to this year With love In love Curious Filled with Possibility And hope Inviting you To come and play And live And be Lit from within
I come to this year Thankful For the invitation, once again To come to this year.
Today we are running a 2017 NYT Frank Bruni column about a woman named Nancy Root. The topic: how and why this very sharp woman is discounted as brainless because she is in a wheelchair.
I have a friend who shares Nancy’s experience. People ask her husband what “she” would like – as she sits in their plain view with all of her faculties.
