Accepting doubt...

Tonight I saw the antithesis of Magnolia in a movie named, Doubt. This movie, like Magnolia, did not lay out the typical beginning, middle, and end plot line that we have grown so accustomed to. But, unlike Magnolia, it clearly led the viewer on a journey, though without spoon feeding it to us like we are idiots. It bore thought. It was another tic on the why I love Philip Seymour Hoffman chart.

The film served as a pure definition for the title. It depicted what is perhaps one of our worst flaws and sins as humans, but what also may be our greatest asset. We know nothing. The human mind is engineered to doubt, to question, to wonder. Because of this and the fact that we are not God, no one of us has each and every answer to the questions of the universe, and the ideas we do have hold no certainty. No one knows. So why people argue points as steadfastly as they had created them themselves I will never understand. Feeling guilty for questioning religion or the Bible or other people is futile. We are wired not just to ask why, but when? How? What? Where? Who? For real?

And, we will keep asking because none of us will ever bear all the insight. This is where doubt as our greatest asset arises. We need each other. Each of us has our own piece of the puzzle that I so like to refer to. Without each other, we have no hope of even coming close to putting it all together. So instead of fighting against each other and each other's beliefs as though we know we are right, we will not move forward as a people until we come together and share our insights, each taking the other in as surely as if it were his own.

There was a quote in my reading today, uttered by Bertice Berry's graduate school advisor, Dr. Elizabeth Mullins,

Discipline your mind to yearn for the whole picture, and you will always be successful.

Of course, in this case, she was referring to statistical research, but I, as well as Berry, feel it has a higher application. The whole picture cannot be seen without the participation of all. In Berry's case, she lived most of her young life under the assumption that all whites in her great-grandparents era were slave-holding evil villains. Until the day she heard the name of the man who owned the farm her great-grandfather had worked on spoken on a tv special about the abolitionist movement. It was then that the whole picture came into view. Her great-grandfather had not been a slave, as she had assumed. He and his boss had worked with the Underground Railroad, helping carry several slaves to freedom. White men weren't all the enemy, after all. And neither are all Catholics, all Canadians, all Republicans, all lawyers, etc., etc. We each carry a piece of the puzzle. So we each deserve a chance to be heard.


There is something different about the sunlight in autumn. Maybe it's a difference in the air. All I know is that it makes even my ratty old couch look beautiful.