This time last year, almost all of my classes were online. I was tuning into seminars over zoom from the back of my car, or from my chilly little attic bedroom. I would wrap myself in an old green vest with too many pockets, several blankets, and a shawl, and I would sit in front of my laptop and take part in conversations.
I learned about theories of knowledge at the knee of an old man with sharp edges and white hair and a white beard and spectacles and dark circles under his eyes.
We got along, at least for a little while, in spite of jarringly different worldviews.
“Always leave room for the possibility that you might be wrong,” he told us, over and over again. The message was not at all unkind, but it was persistent.
He was right, of course. But I used to want to argue with him about this.
“What if there’s such a thing as too much doubt?” I used to ask him.
He never gave me a satisfying answer.
Intricate and careful logic doesn’t always jive with the graceless intuitions of a very tired twentysomething who would much rather be trecking through the woods among the peepers.
There are so many questions that we don’t have answers for. There is so much that may never be certain. And that’s okay.
There are people who find joy in the process of trying to understand, and that’s good enough for right now.