🛣️ STILL LOOKING FOR MY BRAIN
The wisdom of never believing the search is finished
One of the most dangerous sentences we can say is:
“I know.”
Not because knowledge is bad.
We should learn. Study. Question. Compare. Test. Remember. Change our minds when the evidence demands it.
But there is a great distance between:
“I know something.”
and
“I understand everything.”
That distance may be one of the most important stretches of the Yellow Brick Road.
The more we learn about our world, the stranger it becomes.
Look closely at a living cell and another universe appears.
Look outward and galaxies become dots among galaxies among galaxies.
Ask what consciousness is and certainty begins slipping through our fingers.
Ask about time, infinity, existence itself...
and eventually even our best answers become new questions.
Perhaps wisdom is not finally possessing the answer.
Perhaps wisdom is learning how to walk faithfully among questions.
🌽 The Scarecrow’s advantage
The Scarecrow went looking for a brain because he believed he lacked one.
Yet again and again, he demonstrated intelligence precisely because he was willing to think.
There is something worth preserving in that.
Imagine reaching a point where Scarecrow announces:
“Found it. I understand everything now.”
That would be the moment I would begin worrying about him.
The better Scarecrow keeps searching.
Not because he has learned nothing.
Because every new thing he learns reveals how much more remains beyond it.
That is not stupidity.
That is humility.
🧠 Knowing more should make the horizon larger
Real learning does something peculiar.
At first we discover answers.
Then we begin discovering the size of the questions.
The novice sometimes sees certainty everywhere.
The experienced traveler becomes more comfortable saying:
“I don’t know.”
Those three words are not an intellectual surrender.
They are an open door.
“I don’t know” means:
I can still learn.
I may be mistaken.
There may be evidence I haven’t seen.
Someone else may understand something I don’t.
The Road continues.
And sometimes the wisest response to absolute certainty is simply:
NOPE.
😏
Not “nothing can be known.”
Not “everything is relative.”
Just:
Nope, I am not going to pretend my little lantern illuminates the entire universe.
♾️ Then there is infinity
Try to imagine infinity.
Not merely a very large number.
Infinity.
Keep going.
And going.
And going.
There is no last brick.
No final star.
No sign saying:
END OF INFINITY
THANK YOU FOR VISITING
Our minds can work with the concept.
But comprehending infinity in its fullness?
Nope.
And perhaps that realization teaches us something about ourselves.
We are remarkable creatures capable of asking questions larger than our capacity to answer them completely.
There is dignity in that.
And humility.
🙏🏻 And then there is God
For those of us who believe in God, the disparity becomes greater still.
If God is truly the Source of existence, then God cannot simply be another object we place beneath our intellectual microscope and declare solved.
We can seek.
We can study.
We can pray.
We can reason.
We can examine Scripture and history and creation.
We can believe that we genuinely know something of God.
But knowing something is not the same as containing the Source within our understanding.
A cup may hold real ocean water.
It does not hold the ocean.
Perhaps that is where the Road finally teaches us to bow.
Not before ignorance.
Not before another human being claiming unquestionable authority.
But before that which exceeds us.
🛣️ Keep walking
So Scarecrow will keep searching for his brain.
Tomorrow too.
And, if we are fortunate, the day after that.
We will learn things.
We will get things wrong.
We will correct ourselves.
We will occasionally discover that something we were absolutely certain about deserves another look.
Good.
That means we are still traveling.
Because the goal of the Yellow Brick Road was never to become the person who knows everything.
It is to become a little wiser on the journey.
To carry what light we have.
To remain teachable.
To recognize how enormous the horizon is.
And to keep taking the next brick.
Seek the brain.
Use the brain.
Question the brain.
Never mistake the brain for God.
🌽🧠🛣️♾️🙏🏻
Still learning.
Still becoming.
Still walking.
