the elephant  
           
     

Blind men when presented with an elephant gave a different account of what they felt according to which part of the elephant they touched.  Whether they touched the trunk and thought it to be a snake or the leg and thought the elephant to be like a tree, when their eyes were opened they did not fail to recognise the ancient beast before them.  While I do not claim that I once was blind but now I see, I can not fail to acknowledge what lies before me.  Naturally, truths that once served me well no longer adequately describe the world around me nor do they make sense of the man I have become.  Beliefs that served me so well from childhood revealed blind-spots when I most needed clarity of vision and purpose.  What I once thought to be the whole elephant turned out to be a glimpse, as restrictive as it was biased and prejudiced. 

Like the blind men I was certain of what lay before me, but absolute clarity is still only partial when it is 100% of only 1% of the overall picture.  All understanding is limited despite our best effort or intention because life is ever-changing, always growing beyond our understanding.  This is even more true of Truth.  Life and truth exist nonetheless, are unavoidable, essential and real.  Neither is affected by our belief in them, nor by our denial or choices.  Life and truth are always present, like love.  And can only be experienced, lived, rather than understood.  Understanding is based only on a glimpse of truth, and as our understanding grows, the danger is that it becomes the only thing we see, becomes stagnant like a monument to a truth that has long since moved on, while we stayed to worship.  A monument cannot live, cannot grow, like life does, like truth does, like love must.  And so we move through life gaining understanding from moment to moment, but not always explicitly or even in any way we can put our finger on.  Implicit and instinctual understanding, sympathetic to life, able to grow and evolve with life, embracing ambiguity.  So, yes, words still fail me and things do not happen how I want them to; they happen or they do not, falling into place when they are meant to and when I am ready - which is not the same as when I think I am ready.