UNKNOWINGS…

is about the joys and sorrows of fessing up to how little we really know.

I DO NOT KNOW Jessica Böhme but I resonate strongly with her writing. Her article posted yesterday, For Everyone Whose Mind Can’t Settle - A Spiritual Practice, resolved a problem that I have been holding.

As you read, I invite you to notice how this lands with you. How does it feel in your body? The answer to this questions is another story for another time. Do you experience something like an anti-climax? I experienced some mild relief. Does it seem too simplified? It seems elegantly simple. Are you disappointed? I am thrilled. How is it different from reading about a problem or challenge compared to reading about a way forward? If you’re anything like me, once you’re offered something that answers, you might find yourself less interested. Yes, I am like you in this respect. There’s something about the unresolved, the open-ended, that keeps us engaged, curious, and alive. Hence this Substack.

UNKNOWINGS…

is about the joys and sorrows of fessing up to how little we really know.

The way it plays out for me, for example, is that there’s a thrill in the complexity, the messiness, the not-knowing. It’s in this space of uncertainty that I feel most creative, most alive. But the moment someone offers a solution, something in me recoils. The magic evaporates, the mystery dissolves, and I’m left with something that feels flat, lifeless, and oddly dissatisfying. It’s not that the solution is wrong or unhelpful; it’s that it closes the door on exploration. It replaces the fertile ground of inquiry with the sterile certainty of an answer.

Thank you, Jessica, for these words that capture what I have been feeling somewhere deep inside me but unable to adequately express.

Open-endedness is staying present to what is, while remaining curious about what could be. And perhaps most importantly, open-endedness is relational—it’s engaging with the world in a way that allows for resonance, for connection, for the unexpected. It’s not rejecting answers altogether, but holding them lightly, knowing that they are provisional, temporary, and always subject to revision.

Open-endedness is exploration, practice and ongoing inquire.

Open-endedness, then, is not just a mindset—it’s a relational practice that involves engaging with the world in a way that allows for resonance, for connection, for the unexpected.

As I mentioned earlier, the joy of life doesn’t lie in following someone else’s methods, tools, or solutions but in creating our own…

I have noticed that in the liminal space there are a lot of people creating a lot of projects, their unique solution to the metacrisis, and others seem to recoil from those solutions. Why are there so many projects that seem to be going nowhere? Now I get it. Those projects bring joy to the creators. Those fledgling projects are an open-ended engagement with the world, ripe with possibilities.

Of course, as I expressed in my article yesterday, there is a time to get things done. There is a time to solve problems, answer questions, create projects, develop new frames and write articles. But that is not the whole story.

I have experienced another solution to the lack of support for my projects. I have found joy in supporting the project of someone else, specifically, supporting Claudia Dommaschk, who writes Immediacy Forum, in the creation of the Wisdom Exchange online community. WE has been a journey into the unknown from the start. We still do not know where We are going, but we are making good progress.

For those in the liminal space perhaps frustrated by a lack of support for your ideas and projects, why not let go of your own stuff and support the work of someone else.

My UNKNOWINGS… project did not move forward as I had hoped. Others did not feel the joy that I felt creating it. And this is probably true of many other projects.

We Launch!

because some ideas do not fade away

This article shares more About Unknowings.

And now a few more words that resonate from Jessica,

Writing these essays turned out to be a revealing process. It was only through putting my thoughts into words that I realized why I am so deeply in love with—and devoted to—philosophy as a practice. It’s so meaningful to me, because this open-ended space I have been describing is where I find myself in most of waking life. This is my comfort zone. This is where I strive. In constant exploration. At the same time, in a world that seems to be fixated on answers and endpoints, I’ve often felt alone and alienated, like this was something I needed to fix. With finding philosophy, I suddenly noticed that I don’t need fixing. What a revelation :)