I am watching moods change like wild and unpredictable weather. In myself, my loved ones, my clients. I might be near elation in the morning with the rediscovery of some simple pleasure, and by afternoon my chest is tightening with waves of vague dread. How strange it is to be buffeted by this sort of turbulence and not know exactly what is authoring it. Of course there is no mystery as to the source of intense emotion - pandemics have a way to stirring things. But within that, many of us are wading through, day by day, hour by hour, with little idea whether we will be meeting despair or serenity.
These strange days, where what happens next is impossible to know, I feel like I am suspended in a liminal space that offers no markers or sign posts that might give me a hint of where I am. Even the “I” in that sentence loses any particular meaning. My external and internal life seem to resist all of my efforts to know. It’s deeply uncomfortable, all of this not-knowing-ness. It’s the state Adam Phillips describes in his book Missing Out as “not getting it”, which can taunt us with the implication that we are missing some vital information or that we don’t quite get the joke. But in growing up, not getting it comes before getting it — it is a precondition to learning. Adams also points out that getting it presupposes a me to get it. So accepting the state of being in the dark is in some ways the willing dissolution of self/ego. This takes a sort of radical courage. Getting it is often just a matter of signing on with the consensual. Collusion, at the expense of individualization. And as Phillips says, it might be an act of avoidance all together, reflecting the will to not know ourselves.
In the middle of these flashes of panic or grief that rise up at any moment, I am looking for the courage to both know (myself) and not know (based on some false exegesis). I am finding comfort in allowing myself to dissolve back into the river of mystery. The old ways of ordering, knowing, tracing an outline of myself cause more harm than good. They leave me grasping and afraid. But when I let go and just float in dark waters, trusting forces at work that remain obscure to me, I am catching glimpses of peace that is utterly new.