We’ll Never Know All The Answers, But That’s Okay

Meredith Grey poignantly said, “Surgeons have been taught whatever is broken can be mended, what hurts can be healed.” We think of them extraordinarily, knowing anyone can put a band aid to fix bullet holes, but not everyone can pick up a scalpel and save lives. They work tirelessly, witness loss, and recover when lives are saved.

Writers have a way to put their thoughts into words, to translate a feeling and take readers into that journey with them. They can write the perfect love story and make us believe that no matter the degrees of separation, if two people are meant to be together, they will always find their way back to each other.

As adults, some of us have to face the paralyzing horrors of doing things on our own without any manual or blueprints to follow. This is painful at times because we have to tie our own shoelaces with no idea how to start, or how to walk without knowing if gravity and balance can hold us down, or how to love not knowing where it will lead us.

The dilemma goes on, and it feels like we have not figured out things just yet. We ask why surgeons and writers seem to have it figured out, like they have found the fountain of knowledge to deal with loss, grief, anger, and depression to ultimately accept that whatever happens, happens.

We think that as we age, we learn the how-to’s of life and we just survive like that. But the truth of the matter is it’s okay not having anything figured out, to feel loss and be misguided at times. Because the reality is that the best stories of redemption, of love, of success, are all results of not knowing.

It’s easy for us to say that other people have things figured out in their lives and often at a younger age, that they have it easy compared to others. We end up comparing ourselves without digging deeper into the story that formed and shaped them, which brought them to the now.

No one had it easy in life, not even surgeons and writers.

Everyone has had to work their way up the ladder to be where they are now. The cliche goes, “Things have to get worse before they get better,” and it’s true. Some people have to be broken before they can build themselves up into someone they are meant to be, to rise to the occasion and be stronger than who they were before. Some people have to fall from above to see how it is below, to see how to rise from a different perspective.

When you fall, the only way to go is up.

Losing yourself is the best way to find yourself in the process. And if you do, it will be worthwhile. We don’t get to know all the answers. And that’s okay. And somehow, that’s everything.