When in Rome

Ignorance is bliss. We've been having great fun throwing around idioms, aphorisms, and other sometimes salty phrases in discussions and conversations where the phrases make absolutely no sense at all. While our guests and visitors are bewildered why "when in Rome" could be so funny yet entirely nonsensical, we sisterfriends laugh with glee as only those privy to an inside joke can.

But there is nothing amusing about blissful ignorance. It is brain frying, frustrating, maddening, and exhausting to be shaken out of a blissful state of ignorance. I am learning, experiencing, and meeting folks who help build my knowledge and understanding of literally everything related the areas of spirituality, religion, ethical resource consumption, organic farming, family farming, industrial farming, chicken farming, cow farming, living more sustainably, creating community, fostering justice, and last but not least trying to build a website. The more I learn about these subjects, the more I realize I have been scratching the surface of these areas. I am feeling overwhelmed trying to become as informed as possible when doing very simple, mundane things like buying eggs.

It's not a sense of "oh, so much to learn, so little time." It is way, way deeper than that. It is realizing there is no clear right choice, wrong choice. The difficulty is the gray. The grayness of knowing there are endless sides and consequences to an idea, choice, and argument. The more I look for truth or the answer the more I realize there is no one truth or answer. Daunting.

I am thinking about the imagery I've heard lately of the spider web versus the ladder. Climbing up the ladder means we get to the top-truth!-but where to now? In the spider web, there is the center and I am making my way to the center-discovering, learning, experiencing my way to a center. Right now, in my mind the center is where this "knowledge quest" stops feeling so disconcerting. I also like the spider web because once we find our center, it doesn't mean we stay. We experience things things that will undoubtedly shake us from our center, but the quest will always bring us back, I suppose.

Ah, blogging. I am feeling better already. Ok, I'm just trying to find my way back to my center. I was feeling frustrated after a conversation this morning about the myriad of complex choices that go into grocery shopping. I'm also feeling frustrated because I sprayed out in the field for the first time today. I didn't have the strap fastened properly and the spraypack kept sliding off my back. I was so irritated I didn't know how to fix it. I was even more irritated when Sarah showed me how to easily fasten it.

But, hey man, I'm just journeying to my center. I'm just going to take this journey one day at a time.