Sitting with the Questions
We live in an age that has become uncomfortable with not knowing. As a Hydrogeologist, our clients and communities demand certainty and guarantees – where the water is, how much, quality, impact, etc.
The great paradox of our age is that although information and facts have become ubiquitous, our tolerance for uncertainty has never been lower. We increasingly expect life itself to function like a search engine with immediate output in response to our input.
However, Nature, the Earth, and especially natural water systems invite us to a humility of the limitations of our own knowledge and perspective. We are fully aware that we may simply lack the vantage point from which the full picture can be seen. A borehole, or trial well, or even an array of test bores will always only be points on the spectrum of knowledge.
Our response should be: “I do not yet fully understand, but this is best picture I have.”
Although the culture rewards instant opinions and relentless certainty, I need to slow down, and wait, holding the question.
Rilke, the great German poet, wrote:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
In Zimbabwe, before the geophysical survey is carried out and the drilling starts at a new site, the community gather for celebration and prayer. Surely it is good to be reminded that, in the end, even we scientists and specialists cannot be certain in the face of our mysterious and wondrous Earth. Wisdom sometimes arrives more slowly than information.
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