Bewilderment

Disorientation grows

Delightfully uncertain

Enchanted by possibility

We are in a time where we demand certainty. Like King Midas, we are sure that we want gold; what we touch becomes gold, but our certainty is not satisfying. Certainty is cold and unsatisfying. We do not grow when we have certainty. As Alan Levinovitz put it, ‘learning can begin in the space created by uncertainty and ambiguity’.

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Certainty seeks to fix, bind, and ultimately defend. Facts are pinned under glass like butterflies. They are there to be observed. Bewilderment circles the facts. It embraces movement and change, asking irritating questions and imagining different possibilities. Bewilderment is an openness to these facts and the possibility of other, as yet undiscovered, facts.

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Today, bewilderment has come to mean a failure to understand. I wonder if we might get more from trusting the experience of bewilderment as not knowing but curious about finding out.