“The ability to live with relative realities, with questions that have no answer, with the knowledge that you know nothing and with the paradoxical unconsciousnesses of existence—this is precisely the essence of human maturity and the resulting tolerance toward others.” — Paul Watzlawick
I very much like this thought by Paul Watzlawick from his book Münchhausen’s Pigtail or Psychotherapy and “Reality”.
It reminds me of another psychotherapist whose ideas have had a great influence on me—C.G. Jung, who at the end of his life wrote: “the older I became, the less I understood or penetrated myself.” He added that “when Lao Tzu says: ‘All are clear, I alone am cloudy,’ that is the same thing I feel in my advanced age” (see the post “The Late Years of a Mystic“).
There are moments in our lives when we need clarity of mind to exit the enchanted circle in which we have long found ourselves. But there are also moments when exactly the opposite is appropriate—to leave the cloudless sky of our unquestioned conviction in the things we know.
Life is a mystery, and we open ourselves to it only when we become “cloudy.”
Kameliya
