I spent forty years demanding that the universe explain itself to me, insisting that life make sense, requiring answers to questions that might not have answers, growing increasingly frustrated with mysteries that refused to resolve into certainties. Then one day I stopped asking “Why?” and started asking “What if I don’t need to know why?” The relief was immediate and profound.
The need for certainty had been a form of suffering disguised as wisdom. Every unanswered question felt like a personal failure, every mystery like an insult to my intelligence, every ambiguity like evidence that the universe was withholding information I deserved to have. I had confused understanding with control, knowledge with security, answers with peace.
But uncertainty, I discovered, is not the enemy of peace—it’s often the gateway to it. When I stopped demanding that life explain itself, I could finally appreciate its complexity. When I quit insisting on answers, I could finally enjoy the questions. When I released the need to understand everything, I could finally be amazed by anything.
Mystery is not a problem to be solved but a condition to be embraced. The most beautiful aspects of existence—love, consciousness, creativity, meaning—resist explanation while inviting experience. They cannot be understood, only lived. They cannot be grasped, only felt. They cannot be solved, only appreciated.
The demand for certainty creates anxiety because certainty is largely unavailable. We don’t know what happens after death, why we’re here, whether our choices matter in any ultimate sense, what the universe is expanding into, or whether any of our deepest questions have answers. Demanding certainty about uncertain things is like demanding that the ocean be dry—it fights the fundamental nature of what we’re dealing with.
Accepting mystery doesn’t mean abandoning curiosity or stopping the search for knowledge. It means recognizing that some questions are more beautiful than any answer could be, that some mysteries are meant to inspire wonder rather than resolve into facts, that not knowing can be more interesting than knowing.
Maybe wisdom isn’t accumulating certainties but learning to be comfortable with uncertainty, not eliminating questions but learning to love them, not solving mysteries but learning to live peacefully inside them.
Tonight I practice the radical acceptance of not knowing, finding peace in questions without answers, comfort in mysteries without solutions, rest in the vast unknown that surrounds the small island of what I think I understand.
