Unknowingness

This is an archived post that was originally published at beyond-terminal.com

It was shortly after I started my blog in September 2021 that two different friends reached out and asked if I was familiar with the local literacy agency Wise Ink. No, I replied, but I think I’d like to learn more.

Notice the use of the word think instead of know. I’ll admit it — I was nervous. I knew that my manuscript could be improved, yet I had worked so hard to get it in its current form that I couldn’t imagine reworking it…again. I was well aware that asking for more advice meant a potential seismic disruption.

Well, I got that sort of seismic-disruption advice. I believe it’s good advice. Amy Quale, cofounder of Wise Ink and my consultant, has recommended I re-envision my book. Specifically, she has suggested that I consider telling my story from my adult perspective and write most of my passages in past tense. This way, I’ll have an opportunity to add reflective pieces, which I can’t do in the current, present-tense form. Further, this restructuring will allow me to better string together my book thematically.

I’ve taken a stab at this advice and started writing some passages in past tense. Interestingly enough, my brain has started working differently with this approach. In fact, everything that follows after the first paragraph is new writing as a result of a new memory popping up.

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This excerpt below is from the chapter “Yahoo, Tell Me What to Do.” This section takes place at Northwestern University. I’m determined to be able to compete academically, but this comes with a toll on my body – my sympathetic nervous system is revved up, and my hands are constantly sweaty.

My sweaty palms became the bane of my existence, my new obsession. If this problem could be solved, then I was convinced I would never have anything to worry about again. I became so convinced of this that it was all I could think about. How could I solve this? What could I do? What if I tried this? What if I tried that? My ruminations began to bore a hole in my brain and take on a life of their own.

To escape from all of this, I started space traveling in my mind. As I tried to fall asleep at night, I imagined traveling to a different country and what one of my parallel lives might look like in this foreign land.

One day after classes, I took this space traveling fantasy of mine one step further. I purchased a map, laminated it, rolled it up, and tucked it under my arm. I made a second stop at the office supply store for packaging tape, and a third stop at a convenience store for a cheap flashlight. Once I got back to my bedroom, I got to work, lining the map up on the ceiling right above my bed and taping the perimeter while standing on my tippy toes. It took several tries to make it stick, but I had a whole roll of tape – and a type of determination that only people who have been told they won’t amount to anything and are out to prove all those naysayers wrong know about.

I usually dreaded the night, because that was the time that I was forced not to do anything and ended up reflecting on all the things that hadn’t gone the way I had hoped. But that night? That night I turned on my flashlight and shone it upon the world map that hovered seven feet above my eyes. Where should I travel first? I knew I wasn’t sticking around anywhere in North America. I knew, just knew, that my parallel life existed on a totally different continent, and most likely not South America. Not that I had anything against South America; it just had the word “America” in it and therefore didn’t seem exotic enough. 

On this first night, I traveled as far east as I could. Maybe my eyes automatically traveled from left to right because I had to work so hard to learn how to read again. It’s just how my post-illness eyes processed everything. Although I think my flashlight’s gravitational pull toward the limey green India, the ocean blue Nepal, and the bright pink Thailand had more to do with the geographical distance between the United States and these other countries than any post-illness thing, for it was hard to imagine a Megan that was drastically different than my current self unless I traveled to the opposite side of the world.

And the amazing thing about this parallel life was that I discovered that this version of Megan was free of any residual from her childhood illness. In fact, this Megan hadn’t suffered from a childhood illness at all. She was totally unencumbered. It was a miraculous discovery. I saw this vague outline of her as she roamed alleys in a nameless foreign town. I watched her get intentionally lost, and rather than worrying about this, she delighted in it, for therein lay some secret marvel that travel books weren’t even aware of.

Because of these space traveling experiences, I came not to dread the night as much. Yes, I hated all the obsessing I did about my hands, my dreaded hands, those things that I sometimes wanted to just cut off from the rest of my body. But then, after all that agonizing, this different Megan materialized in this illuminated spot. She was there dancing in a halo on my ceiling. If only I could figure out how to internalize this light.

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At this point in my life, I couldn’t imagine intentionally getting lost and actually delighting in it. I was metaphorically lost so being physically lost would have only amplified my feeling of being metaphorically lost. No thank you.

I wanted exactitude, I wanted to know right from wrong, black from white. I hated ambiguity and shades of gray. Not surprisingly, this way of thinking stemmed from my illness, my desire to understand what happened so that I could prevent it from happening again. There had to be an answer. Somewhere. It was just a matter of looking hard enough.

Ironically, for me to become whole again, I had to do a 180. 

Where do I now stand? I embrace ambiguity and actively seek gray in any form. Republican or Democrat? I lean one way more than another, yet I don’t think either side should be villainized. Buddhist, Hindi, Muslim, agnostic? I’m a Christian, yet I bet we have more similarities than differences, and I no longer think there is only one path to salvation. Are you a member of the BIPOC community? I’d like to learn more from you, hear about your lived experiences, and how they are similar to and different from mine.

Through learning to accept myself and my past, I came to embrace differences. Further, I now can rest in a place of unknowing.

Jack Kornfield, author and Buddhist practitioner, speaks to this unknowingness so eloquently:

“Wisdom is not knowing but being. The Christian mystics instructed seekers to enter the Cloud of Unknowing with a trusting heart. The wise heart is not one that understands everything—it is the heart that can tolerate the truth of not knowing. Wisdom comes alive in the presence of the mystery, when the heart is open, sensitive, wholly receptive. Out of this simple presence, empathy, love, responsiveness, and other good things are born (https://jackkornfield.com/the-wisdom-of-not-knowing/).”