Good Emptiness

We should embrace the fact that so many things remain mysterious to humanity. The answers to some beautiful questions, from the perspective of humans, remain unknown. For some books, the pages are empty. I love the good emptiness.

Some understandings about our existence are, for now anyway, unknowable. Yet in the last several hundred years, humanity's knowledge and technology have exploded. What we know and what we don't know coexist smoothly within a reality that I adore. I am overjoyed by the amazing and mysterious fact that I am aware of the incredible luck I had to be born, and to be alive as a thread of an intricate tapestry of life and matter and energy that has been selectively woven over the last 14 billion years by natural processes that we largely understand, while simultaneously exposing and highlighting those things that remain a mystery to us.

I have labored with love to learn those beautiful mechanisms of our existence. And I love to struggle with the unanswerable questions. It can be fun to fantasize, but I don't need fictional explanations or patronizing answers to embrace me in a warm blanket of assurance and false understanding. I love my struggle with the mysteries. I am not afraid of the unknown. I will always embrace the good emptiness.

What is bad? It is the bad emptiness of substituting false beliefs for knowable understanding.

Here is a real problem for which I have no answer and no one can teach me the answer:

I am alive. I will die. I do not know the time of my death. What should I do?

I have to search for my own answer. I have to find a way to live. I will always learn. I will always love. I will never forget that I am human. But I still do not know the answer to my problem. Neither do you. Don't pretend you do.

I love the good emptiness because I love being alive and I love learning. The mystery is why.