The Beauty of Not Knowing

We stand at the threshold. We don’t know what comes next. We face the unknown. Liminal space lies before us as we take the step from what we have known to the space of not knowing.

As elders we have done this many times over the decades. The march of time itself has moved us from phase to phase of maturation—physically, emotionally, culturally. Our long lives have been filled with unknown spaces and we have survived them—sometimes gracefully, other times kicking and screaming.

We pass over thresholds many times each day, walking from one room to another or striding along a hallway to get from one place to the next. We barely register these liminal moments. They are simply part of our daily lives, unthreatening. However, when a significant transition occurs, we might become frightened of the unknown, of functioning in not knowing.

Much of the ‘work’ of eldering is re-framing—seeing from a different perspective the events of our long lives. Liminal spaces too can be seen in a different light, the light of beauty.

These spaces contain all potential. Anything and everything is possible. It is an empty space that we can be filled with new ideas, poetry, learning skills, adventure, new career. Without the empty space there is no room for the new. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (1904-1971) called it ‘beginner’s mind’. He famously reminds us that, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”.

Each liminal space allows us to be curious, without fixed ideas. This allows for the beauty of limitless prospects. Here, in the ‘in-between’ space, anything is possible. We stand at the borderline, separating the tried and true, the familiar, from the vastness of not knowing. In the last century the surrealist Renee Magritte (1898-1964) painted open, powder blue skies, inviting us to step into that vastness. His painting depicted the known—a pipe, an apple—against what embraces it—an open, sky-space of the unlimited.

As we open to this immensity we are called upon to breathe, to ground in the felt sense of our body. Here we find stability as we explore the transitional, the intermediate, settling into our embodiment as we face the next step of exploration. This is the space of beginner’s mind.

It is also the space of recalling. We have been here before, most likely many times. We have, deep in our cellular memory, the fortitude to face this magnificent, glorious beauty, and to create something/someone new.

Liminality develops our visionary muscles. Pause now, for a moment. In the space of not knowing allow something unexpected to emerge. Who are you? Who can you create in this open space without limits? What arises? What is the uncertainty telling you? What beauty do you see/feel/hear?

There may be no answers right now, only the simplicity of being. The liminal beauty may be with you for a fleeting moment or an hour or a season. Living in this spaciousness brings gifts we have yet to experience.