"I Don't Know" -- the beginning of Wisdom
Lately I've been reading poets. A friend, Kevin Armstrong, recommended a collection of Poems: New and Collected by Wistawa Szymborska -- and I came across the following that she wrote in the introduction:
"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets and artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners--I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. What ever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous 'I don't know.'"...
"That is why I value that little phrase 'I don't know' so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include space within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself, 'I don't know,' the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones, and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself, 'I don't know,' she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families and ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying 'I don't know,' and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize."
"I don't know" sounds like what I heard in South Africa that I loved so much. That is to say -- people struggling to find their way into the future and willing to risk not knowing...stepping out in faith. And willing not to do just what others think might work -- but trusting the Spirit at work among them. It is that type of humility with which we need -- I need -- to approach the world. I read that passage early on Christmas morn. I hope that "I don't know" was re-born with me this Christmas.
"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets and artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners--I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. What ever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous 'I don't know.'"...
"That is why I value that little phrase 'I don't know' so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include space within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself, 'I don't know,' the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones, and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself, 'I don't know,' she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families and ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying 'I don't know,' and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize."
"I don't know" sounds like what I heard in South Africa that I loved so much. That is to say -- people struggling to find their way into the future and willing to risk not knowing...stepping out in faith. And willing not to do just what others think might work -- but trusting the Spirit at work among them. It is that type of humility with which we need -- I need -- to approach the world. I read that passage early on Christmas morn. I hope that "I don't know" was re-born with me this Christmas.
posted by Mike Mather at 2:26 PM
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