On Seeing
We are only as blind as we want to be. Maya Angelou
There’s a phrase I learned in my collaborations with marketing: you don’t know what you don’t know what you don’t know (I throw in an extra “You don’t know” for measure). There are knowns, unknowns but known, and unknowns unknown to you (or anyone else out there!). It relates to risk management and evaluating potential reward vs cost. Many times it’s used to discuss business, but it also is something we do everyday, sometimes unconsciously, as we travel this journey known as life.
The concept came up in a recent conversation I had, though it wasn’t categorized as such. We covered a wide range of topics but they all really related to this one thing: risk and reward. What are you willing to do for what you want? Taking a step back, what do you want (sometimes that’s not even clear…)? What do you value?How do you define reward or success? What opportunities are there in your life to align with what you want? What motivates you to make a choice? Do you take responsibility for your choices and are you accountable for the consequences? Do you see the consequences before a decision, and does this factor into your decision? And so on.
As a basic metric of risk/reward, I suppose that just by breathing we exchange our life potential for whatever we gain or lose with that breath. So in a sense the number of breaths is the currency used to get the reward you want. Or as we measure it — Time. Birth and death, and life as we know it between those two boundary conditions, are what we are conditioned to believe is reality and where all the action takes place. Whether we achieve the rewards we desire, live the life we want to between those two points, is a complex tangle of outside and internal influences that are unique to every individual. It’s an enormous challenge we face with every breath to navigate this world and find some measure of reward as we define it.
Near the end of the conversation we discussed what we wanted done for our funerals. I personally don’t know if I want to be cremated or buried and I hope I have time to figure it out. But he had a clear vision — underground below a bench and an apple tree. I suppose the idea was that people could visit and relax, maybe have a conversation, where he was laid to rest. To offer a place of pause. I thought it was very interesting for someone whose life’s actions seem to be very “in the moment” to have thought so far ahead, while I, who thinks, researches, and plans out most major life events in agonizing detail with a vision of what is next, had no clear idea of what I wanted when I reached the end of my known existence. I may not know what comes after this existence so to me I don’t dwell all that much on it. In my mind, we can know what is today and maybe what is tomorrow based on our actions of today. Most of my planning is to create future moments that can be treasured. But that day, just being present and in that moment was the most meaningful of all. Instead of strangers on a bench under an apple tree in some distant future, it was two people who have known eachother forever on a seawall under a sea grape tree where conversation flowed freely. And, that was enough.
