Remember “Encyclopedia Brown”?  We read these detective stories with Jake and Abby, my 9-year-old stepkids, before bed.  They get a logic-rush attempting to solve the 
latest “Case of the Missing Thingamajig.” 
As a kid, I loved to read mystery novels too. They were thrilling, 
especially if I solved them myself instead of sneaking a peek at the answer in the back of 
the book.  Either way, upon finding that answer, I felt great satisfaction and relief.

I loved the certainty of knowing. I know I am not alone in that.
Our culture puts a high value on certainty. We are conditioned to look for
and find the answers, even though most, if not all, of the most important
questions in life simply don’t have a final answer.

I recently returned from my Crown Fellowship program at the Aspen Institute.  There, we read and discussed texts from philosophers and great thinkers from the last two thousand years: Aristotle, Dostoyevsky, Borges, Twain.  Each was asking the same questions:  What is meaning?  What is compassion?  What is love?  What is life itself?   They didn’t have absolute answers to these questions and neither do we.

Life is to be lived, not solved.  It’s an evolving process, a work in progress, that we experience moment to moment. Stay open to the possibility that there may be more there than a certain single answer. This insight, of course, is not a lightning-bolt “aha.” But it’s amazing how this ‘certainty factor’ sneaks up on us to limit our vision.  It seems to me we pay a great price when we believe we know and stop wondering.

As a 3 year old, Jake, when presented with a challenging question like “Did you stuff this sandwich in the VCR?” would say: “I can’t know it.”

I can’t know it. That’s as good an answer as any.