As a youngster, my proudest question was: “when you get to the end of the universe what is beyond?” This felt really profound for a nine-year-old before the first moon landing.
There are some questions, really good questions, where we have to be prepared to go to the edge to see the answer. In fact, even there it’s still not clear and it’s not our intellectual minds that are going to find it.
This is the place where insight comes to life if we give it sufficient space, which often means metaphorically walking away or letting go of our ability to control the outcome. Insight isn’t an answer to a logical question, with all the materials we have to hand. It’s that magical point where we see connections across boundaries out of the corner of our eye.
The thing about insight is once you have seen it, it’s obvious. And you can’t undo it. But we also can’t manufacture it. We have to go to the edges of what we know, and sometimes of who we are, for the amazing to appear.
And only a really compelling question, one that really matters to us, is enough to push ourselves this far. Because we have to stay with the uncertainty of not knowing. Until we do.