Remember the bumper stickers: “I’d rather be fishing” or “I’d rather be sailing”?  I’d rather be…living a bigger story. Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

So much of my life has been spent finding answers, “figuring it out”, whatever “it” is.  But living a bigger story means being part of a mystery and not knowing.  The physicist, Richard Feynman, puts it eloquently:

“I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.”

Except for maybe in Sunday school or a preacher’s sermon (which I was not exposed to in any depth) we are not taught to savor mystery.  Instead, we are socialized to have the pat answer.  And this only leads to small stories–what Feynman calls provincial stories.

 

 

My friend, Dave, has been to hell and back with health issues in 2012.  He’s had multiple surgeries and trips to the ER, indescribable pain, and the frustration of having no answers.  He sums it up this way:

“Randomness rules & uncertainty needs to be a comfort zone.  Truth is still out there…just not simple to find.”

Living a bigger story means being in connection with something bigger. I have never had a structured religion to point the way to that place of connection.  And yet I know it exists. It comes in “winks” from the Universe. In synchronicities and coincidences that are hard to explain. Lost pictures found. Taking a seat with my extended family at a high school graduation ceremony, filled with thousands of people, and hearing the voice of a friend, seated directly behind me.  Sending an email to someone who I have not spoken to in weeks, just at the moment when they are thinking of reaching out to me.

I’m not saying that living with mystery is easy.  I like knowing the whole game plan and seeing things unfold like clockwork.  It’s how I’m wired.  But I also know that what I can imagine in my mind is so pitifully small and mundane compared to what life presents.

How do you live a bigger story?