The Unknown of Everything

in our everyday life most things are generally normal and routine a bird a tree a city block a drive home from work a meal a load of laundry a night of sleep and so on after a certain age of adolescence most things begin to fall into this category of averageness or tediousness this can for obvious reasons post problems on our experience of life a frequent sense of boredom and monotony science religions and philosophies often work to provide us with answers and clarity about the universe and our existence within it we seek to learn about what we as a collective species know about ourselves and this reality in order to aid our experience of it this can be helpful of course but perhaps an equally valuable and often neglected source of wisdom joy and vitality can be found not in what we know but in what we don't know a deep contemplation and assimilation of the unknown into our daily life 19th century writer Henry David Thoreau writes my desire for knowledge is intermittent but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe to be intoxicated with the fumes call it of that divine nectar to bear my head through atmospheres and over Heights unknown to my feet is perennial and constant which is to say the experience and effects of concrete knowledge can be fleeting but the wonder found in the spirit of the unknown can be constant and enduring with no more than a glance upward at a clear starry night sky as we stare into the eyes of the incomprehensible and infinite space above us we are likely to experience an overwhelming awareness of how little we know and how little we are the universe stares back at us with its stark glare and reminds us how deeply strange and unclear our life really is even in the most simple and normal the great cosmologists Carl Sagan said the cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be our feeblest contemplations of the cosmos stir us there's a tingling in the spine a catch in the voice a faint sensation as if a distant memory of falling from a height this feeling of awe is immensely liberating and provoking it reminds us that we stand at the crossroads of the infinite in the finite the everything and the nothing the knowing and the unknowing in truth no matter what we think we know we are probably wrong and no matter what anyone else thinks they know they are probably wrong nobody ever figures out what life is all about and it doesn't matter explore the world nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough said renowned theoretical physicist Richard Feynman at this point no one truly knows what's going on in any fundamental sense nothing about this life is simple or clear and nothing down here on earth including us from the perspective of the stars matters all that much to anything beyond itself paradoxically in this we find great opportunity for wisdom humility exploration and profound experience in even the most common in mundane there is complexity and strangeness we don't even know why we sleep or dream we don't know how most of our brain works or what consciousness is we don't know if time is real in any physical sense we don't know what gravity is or why it is we don't know if there are infinite other universes or dimensions around us right now we don't know why energy or matter even came to be in the first place or why it was followed by a perfect sequence of colliding combining exploding and emerging all to put us here right now able to ask why at the base of almost everything the resulting statement is we don't know when we disregard this unknowingness we can easily become disinterested uninspired and worn out of this life we can put great stress on things that perhaps don't matter all that much and neglect our experiences and things that do we can feel the pressure and anxiety of chasing perfection and certainty which of course at this moment do not exist alternatively the frequent consideration and acceptance of the unknown within every moment and in everything can bring us back down to our earthly innocence and curiosity and open us up to an appreciation for all things people and ideas we should look to the universe often not solely for answers but for a perspective for a healthful adjustment and aerial consideration of our daily life arguably within this practice the little things in life become more exciting and striking the mistakes in the annoyance has become less significant the calm becomes easier and everyday activities of our life that we so often view as wasteful and tedious reveal to be wonderfully strange in curious parts of our existence that we should perhaps make efforts to ponder and appreciate as often as we can as if to say I'd love to marvel at and enjoy this work of art I've created the universe gave itself humanity through our eyes the universe is perceiving itself through our ears of the universe is listening to its harmonies we are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory of its magnificence said 20th century American British philosopher Allen Watts and what a shame it would be to waste this experience by denying said glory and magnificence in a clear starry night sky we see beauty not because we know where all the stars came from or where they will all go but because we don't in the scope of the bigger picture the only thing that seems to remain sizeable and relevant about us is that we are here able to look up to the stars any night we'd like during our brief and fleeting exploration of this life and wonder why they are there we must remember that the unknown is always above below and beside us whenever we needed you you

Channel: Pursuit of Wonder

Views: 521,543

Keywords: exurb1a, school of life, wiserack, rick and morty, alan watts, carl sagan, richard feynman, the mystery at the bottom of physics, calm, a reason not to worry, a reason to stop worrying, the unknown of everything, universe, happy, cosmos, the beginning and end of humanity, life, existence, existential, philosophy, the wisdom of the space, science, the universe in 4 minutes, quantam mechanics, theories, theory, law, wonder, shots of awe, jason silva, cosmic, energy, of life, how to, relax, enjoy

Id: loBqzP3Yaj0

Length: 6min 4sec (364 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2019