There are things we all know about life and the universe.

There are things some know but others don’t.

There are things we know we don’t know.

And then there are things all of us do not know we do not know.

What if there’s lot of what we do not know we do not know?

How do we even begin looking?

My best guess is we must keep moving forward, staying alert, and being ready for whatever may emerge: downsides as well as upsides.

‘The history of exploration is marked by tragedy.  Still, we explore.  Our deep compulsion to explain who and what we are will drive us.  We will explore the most distant points in space, probe the deepest oceans, map the mind, tinker with the human genome, and scan every other arena of curiosity.  We will turn over every microcellular rock in search of the meaning of the universe.  We will search the heavens for another Earth, for signs of life among the stars.  And, all along, what we are really seeking is the meaning of us.’*

We each find ourselves in these sentences penned by Alex McManus.  All of us are creating our maps of meaning.  Each perspective is important and may bring us to a greater place of knowing.  None of us can we say we have it all.

The leaders of our quest will be honest and accurate about where we are, they’ll discern ways and means of understanding in order to move forward, and they’ll be the most open to new discoveries – more of an artist than a traditional leader:

Artists and musicians and poets and scientists and engineers keep coming up with new perspectives, new ways of thinking, new ideas, new ways of understanding, and, always, new questions.

We all were artists once upon a time.  We simply forgot how to make our art.  We can learn again.

‘The artist trains himself; it can be no other way.Each artist is animated by a unique longing.  There are no outer ready-made maps for what the artist wants to create.’**

(*From Alex McManus’s Makers of Fire.)
(**From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)