The Christmas of Not Knowing

I entered the Christmas season reading Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, an explanation of the 2008 financial crash on Wall Street. The book is a big reminder that most people don’t know what they are doing primarily because they believe that the world is found in the limited scope of their perspective, but they are looking at shadows. In other words, The Big Short is a financial recapitulation of Plato’s cave, only if that cave were peopled by heartless financiers whose inability to see beyond their own shadows had implications far beyond the cave and into the world where the rest of humanity lives. Lewis’s book might have been titled The Big Shortsightedness.

I start my Christmas letter with this example because it best encapsulates the world of both a young family in their tenth year of parenting, and an expat in his second year expatriating. Our family went from the wide-eyed wonder of a world wholly foreign to us in one year to a confidence that comes from quick judgments and sweeping generalizations. But then we learn that still don’t know what we are doing, and we wonder often what the implications are of knowing nothing. Our knowledge of Kuwait is certainly greater than it was last year, and our knowledge of the world perhaps wider, but about all we can say about that still is that knowledge is great and the world is wide.

Parenting is the obvious analogue here. We parented a lot in 2013—I am afraid not very well, but I don’t really know—and constantly were upbraided by reminders that we have no idea what we are doing. I speak for myself here, but I am pretty sure our cluelessness is a joint enterprise.

 

We also spent money in 2013, perhaps on things that were not worth it and on others that maybe were.  The tickets and gas for trips were often worth it, the shoes also, although the shirts not so much, and the food came out 50/50. For every perfect 20 dollar shawerma meal there is an unnecessary trip to Starbucks for hot chocolate and stale muffins. At any rate, we spent money and we don’t really know what we are doing.

We worked in 2013 in many places—at home, at church, at play. The first one is probably the most taxing. The second is fairly rewarding. The third causes the most stress. Here’s a story about work: a colleague of mine mentioned that her students told her that “Professor James said he would be available for conferencing during the break, and just to email him and he would meet us at his office.” The colleague looked dumbfounded and told me I was crazy. I then reminded her that I have three kids at home. There are places where we know what we are doing more than others, and meeting students about their Milton papers is much easier than dealing with Calvin’s restlessness, Henry’s anxiousness, and Maria’s inquisitiveness, simultaneous and constant. Because doing one of those things at least makes it look like I know what I am doing.

The point of all of this is that in 2013 we realized a little bit more that we know less about so little. And that is all a natural part of the mid-30s experience, I am told. As it goes with knowledge so it goes with time. The more you have behind you, the more it disappears beside and before you, and the less you understand how it works.

At Christmas, certainly holier when the culture surrounding you doesn’t besmirch it with relentless commercialism, it is nice to realize that we know so little, mainly because that forces to hang on to those things we don’t need to know so much about: feelings and emotions. We feel Christmas in a place that doesn’t force it on us, and we feel love for our kids even though we know so little about them, and we feel gratitude to our friends even though articulating that gratitude too often seems trite and cloying. Finally, we feel the good things that come with Christmas because we sense, without knowing, that it is sacred, meaningful, and encompassing. Sometimes a feeling, after all we know we don’t know, is enough.