You Can't Do Everything - And That's Fine

Have you ever found yourself in a deep talk?

“What’s the point of life?”

“Where do we all come from?”

“Who created the creator?”

These conversations feel very meaningful. Yet they always finish on the same confusing note.

It seems like however hard we try, we will never be able to understand everything.

Maybe the human brain is too low level to understand the Big Band or Dark Matter

This feels right… maybe the human brain is too low level to understand big concepts like the Big Bang or dark matter.

But if everyone thought like this, the world would suck. Big time.

 

The limits of reason:

Humans have limits.

When we think about the deep questions of life, they just become more obvious.

Like “What happened before the Big Bang.”

In those moments of truth, it’s tempting to say that we don’t know sh*t.

And it’s true. Humans don’t know sh*t compared to all we could know.

But when we say that, we imply reason is useless. That because of its limits, it can’t solve anything.

Your mind is much more powerful than that. Thoughts can solve small problems like building an axe to big problems like the meaning of life.

The limits of reason doesn’t undermine all it can do.

It’s better not to give up on your mind — because then we will stop thinking about the big questions.

Imagine if Albert Einstein said he couldn’t understand maths. He would never have discovered relativity. The fact that he did (against all odds) makes the discovery even more powerful.

The mind is capable of much more than we think. Yet we undermine that by claiming we don’t know anything.

 

How to cope :

Your mind is like a hammer.

The hammer has a purpose: pinning nails.

But it can’t turn screws like a screwdriver. That doesn’t make the hammer useless, though.

The same thing goes for the mind. Even if it can’t do everything, it is still useful.

It’s easy to deal with the downsides of a hammer. But with the mind, it’s a bit harder.

Just like with the hammer, the best way to cope with the limits of our mind isn’t to fixate on them. It’s to be aware of them.

Do you see the difference?

Fixating is saying: “it is useless.” Whereas being aware of them is seeing what it can do (while knowing what it can’t).

With the second option, you don’t say

Everything I know is a lie!

What’s true stays true. It’s just that beyond the limit, you get to experience the awe of having no idea about anything.

Awe is so important to keep us interested in the world around us. But we shouldn’t sacrifice our logic for it.

Logic is very a useful tool — even if it has limits.

If you enjoyed this article, you can go through some of my other texts. You won’t regret it.