Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Did I Ever Wake Up?

Did I Ever Wake Up?

Did I ever wake up to this life? Have any of us?

I think that the very fact we are here is a beautiful mystery, no matter how you might be looking at it all.

The truth is that with all of the pain and beauty and love in the world, I would hate for you to sleep through your time here, unaware of how incalculably precious this whole thing is.

The scope of the why of it all can feel like getting hit by a freight train when you finally open your eyes.

Am I awake now?

Are you?

It was hot, so hot the mirror felt warm. I washed before the mirror in a daze, my twisted summer sleep still hung about me like sea kelp. What blood was this, and what roses? It could have been the rose of union, the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and the blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth. The sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain. I never knew. I never knew as I washed, and the blood streaked, faded, and finally disappeared, whether I’d purified myself or ruined the blood sign of the passover. We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence…. “Seem like we’re just set down here,” a woman said to me recently, “and don’t nobody know why.”

-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

The Difference Between A Problem And Mystery

The Difference Between A Problem And Mystery

The difference between a problem and mystery is that you are a part of the latter and not the former.

A problem is a simple solving of X and Y.

But a mystery involves X, Y, and Z – where you are Z.

This fact makes an answer to a mystery so much more difficult.

For this same reason, science can sometimes show the what, but never the why.

“Getting to Mars is a problem,” Peter Kreeft adds, but “falling in love is a mystery.” Why is that so? Because a mystery is a problem that encroaches upon itself. What does that mean? It means that finding a solution to a problem of which we ourselves are inextricably a part is difficult if we do not recognize our own role in it. That makes it a mystery. A problem just needs a solution. A mystery needs an explanation.

-Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale, Why Suffering?

Does that make sense?

Maybe this is why you can tell your friend the best advice in the world about how to get along with her parents – and still have trouble dealing with your parents.

The passage concludes:

Errors in judgment can be made both from bias and because of an inner shortcoming. That is why a problem is easier to solve than a mystery; there is a theory attached to solving a problem. A mystery is more difficult to understand because there is so much potential for it to be compromised. The facts may not change, but identifying who is involved in the telling is critical.

Sterling Terrell