The Unknown Unknowns

 Recently, a friend brought to my attention the following quote from Henry Thoreau and suggested I might consider reflecting on it in this venue:

 

Henry Thoreau in Walden: “We are sound asleep nearly half our time.” 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.”

 Thoreau is famous for removing himself form his society and living the ‘idyllic’ simple life in a cabin in the woods by Walden Pond.   It has been a long time since I read anything by or of Thoreau so I come to this quote with a limited context. 

 The thoughts which come to me this morning are from a perspective that I wasn’t anticipating.   I anticipated that I would explore the quiet life and perhaps the opportunities that Thoreau must have had a contemplative life or how we can commune with God by our experience of nature.  However, what came t my mind unsought was the idea of the unknown unknowns.  Some years ago, an official in the 2nd Bush president - not sure who now – spoke of their being three categories of knowledge, the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns.  In effect we know what we know, we know what we don’t know but there is the third category of not knowing the things we don’t know we don’t know.  Now I hesitate in principle to give credit to anyone in George W Bush’s administration, however, it seems to me there is some wisdom in this realization.  The realization that there a not knowing in life puts us in a position which is uncomfortable for most of us.  If we don’t know what we don’t know how can we ever keep our sense of being in control of our lives?  This, of course, is an illusion but it is one which we try in many ways to maintain to live our daily lives in some comfort until our world gives us a taste of the unknowns, we try our utmost to not consider.

You might well ask how this relates to that quote from Thoreau.  Well, to be honest I am not completely sure.  Perhaps Thoreau was attempting to explore the known unknowns so that he could live the full life as he imagined it – to discover what he had not lived.  But, in my imagination, Thoreau must have discovered some of the unknown unknowns which he could not have expected form the experience. 

 I don’t know Thoreau’s belief in a divine being.  However, he was a Transcendentalist and according to Wikipedia Transcendentalism has:

A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature,[1] and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the every day, rather than believing in a distant heaven. Transcendentalists saw physical and spiritual phenomena as part of dynamic processes rather than discrete entities.

In my view those of us who believe in a Divine source in this world approach it generally with the first two ways of knowing i.e., the known knowns and the known unknowns.  We want to put God into a box which is manageable and comfortable.  The known known approach is to take holy scripture as the literal inerrant word of God putting God into a contained box with well-defined dimensions which we can strive to live up to or not.  The known unknown approach to God is to expand the parameters of that box to a lesser or greater extent but we still have a firm idea of who and what God is and is not.  However, to approach God with true humility is to realize that God is far beyond any concept we might have of God.  That box we want to put God into has gaps and holes in it and can no longer contain what or who God is.  I don’t know if it is possible to apprehend God fully in this way and not retain at least some of the box in our concept of God.  Perhaps those who are blessed to have a mystical experience are apprehending just that.   However, if we approach God in honest humility, we will perhaps we surprized by joy, to use C.S. Lewis’ phrase.

Perhaps Thoreau and the Transcendentalists were hoping to achieve just this in their approach to the mystery of life – to be surprized by the joy and wonder of creation.  Perhaps we can as well.  For me that is not easy as the unknown unknowns can be rather a scary prospect at least at times. 

I hope that on your journey you are blessed in being are able to leave the door open a crack to get a glimpse of those things we don’t know we don’t know on your journey.