I stumbled across this excerpt from Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked this way Comes today, and was really struck by it:
“Have I said anything I started out to say about being good? God, I don’t know. A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little bit about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.”
Lately, I have this overwhelming sense of Not Knowing. Like there is too much to Know and I will never Know all of it. Based on how well my brain retains information it encounters, I’m fairly certain that I do not actually sleep at night, but instead sleep walk to Home Depot, break inside of it, and spend the entire night sniffing paint. But I don’t want to just give up, abandon trying to Know, become complacent, let my brain stop at recipes and kinds of pants. I want to keep knowing. If this means less sleep, then maybe, SO BE IT.