“You Don’t Have to Understand Life — You Just Have to Live it”

I like knowing things. The winning lottery numbers. Robert Pattinson’s relationship status. What that cute boy behind the bakery counter is thinking. I learned recently that the centre of the galaxy is flavoured like rum and raspberries. Yesterday, I was shown how to disgorge a fish. And now I know that earlobes can sweat (don’t ask me how I know this, but please, do bring a towel).

The more we exist, the more we learn, the more we know.

As human beings we come equipped with this innate desire to understand stuff. It’s how we’ve progressed this far as a species. Whilst sat inside our caves in the deep, deep past, chalking penis’ onto the wall and tucking into a meaty chunk of antelope thigh, we let ourselves wonder what this might taste like heated up. With a little seasoning. Perhaps accompanied by some salty fried potato. And now we have McDonald’s.

Lions have never thought that, but we did. Human curiosity led us here.

And that’s why we humans are so much more advanced than any other species. Because of our desire to wonder, our capacity to learn, our love of understanding.

But that’s also why people are so much more stressed out, depressed, frantic than our animal counterparts. Because of our desire to wonder, our capacity to learn, our love of understanding. And all the crap that comes along with it when we’re unable to understand.

It freaks us the freak out.

When we can’t understand something, it can knock us off our feet and push us over the edge. What a friggin’ joke, right? We cling so desperately onto knowledge that we plummet without it.

But I don’t have the upper body strength for this crap. So. How do I learn to let go?

Stop trying to know and start letting it go.

Mrs. Elm said to Nora Seed in Matt Haig’s bestselling novel, The Midnight Library:

“You don’t have to understand life — you just have to live it.”

I’m so thankful somebody invented the kettle. And peanut butter. And ITV2. But if I leaned against the kitchen counter and dismantled the kettle to figure out how it works every time I fancied a brew — it’d be iced tea by the time I was done. If I Googled each of the ingredients, flavourants and chemicals mixed into my crunchy Morrison’s own peanut butter, it’d drive me nuts. If I thought about all the satellites involved in distributing tonight’s episode of Love Island to every household TV across the UK, well. I’d end up missing out on who Danny decides to couple up with.

If I spent all my time trying to understand life, then I’d miss out on actually living it.

You see?

If you try to figure out every inch of existence, you’ll never make it more than half a step along your journey. If you question every decision you ever make, you’ll never have time to make another. If you pick apart every conversation, every relationship, every moment, then they’ll crumble at your feet.

Stop pulling life apart at the seams, because life is rarely what it seems.

The only thing we need to understand is that we will never understand it. Not really. Not in full. Not in our lifetimes. And that, my friend, is okay. It’s ace. It’s freeing, actually, because it’s our get-out-of-jail-free card, our chance to slip out from the cages of questioning we trap ourselves inside of and get back to life. Get back to living.

When we kiss our cats on the forehead, we don’t think about why. When we paint out nails the colours of the cosmos, we don’t second guess the action. When we wake up each morning, breathing deep, stretching wide, we don’t question it. We accept it. We say thank you for it. And then we live.

Because Mrs. Elm was right. Sometimes it’s okay to not want to know the compositions of stars and instead, just gaze up at the sky and admire their beauty. Existing is enough.

We don’t have to understand life — we just have to live it.

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Oh hey, whilst you’re here: why not put the “em” into your “emails” and lob your name onto my mailing list for weekly em-bellishments on my rose-tinted, crumb-coated lens of life. It’s the equivalent of the reduced section in the supermarket (low value Weird Crap™ that you didn’t know you needed).