Mysteries matter: imagine gazing at the night sky on a dark, clear night with all the stars of the Heavens visible. The stars in the night sky hold us in awe—the same, ancient awe known to all of our ancestors.
Now imagine some “know-it-all” character coming up and trying to explain to you that the stars you’re gazing at are “actually,” “in fact,” “balls of burning whatever gas x many lightyears away that will someday, long after we’re gone, blah, blah, blah.”
Beyond the pretentious claim to have “the answer” to the mystery, there is something about the attempt to “pin down” the answer once and for all that is not just pretentious, but perverse and increasingly pervasive. Even if scientists offered some “indisputable” account of what the stars are, the acceptance of such an answer would rob us of something much more important than answers: wonder.
Wonder is an intimate encounter with a mystery as timeless as its contemplation is essential and fruitful—despite its being bottomless, inexhaustible, and at times altogether enigmatic. Indeed, wonder’s very essence is that it is endless: we wonder knowing that the matter will never be completely settled. Yet, in wonder we discover possible and impossible possibilities, and we come face-to-face with the promise of what is altogether unknowable—and yet perennially fruitful to those who wonder.
If there was no mystery surrounding the stars, they would not hold us in awe and sustain our wonder as they do.
But is there more to say about the fruit of mystery and wonder? First it must be said that in wonder, our mind has a chance to wander and discover surprising possibilities in places it hasn’t yet ventured, or in places previously visited but now seen anew. Beyond mere possibilities, however, wonder sometimes delivers us over to discoveries that strike as more actual than mere possibilities. The ancient Greek word for truth is aletheia, and a literal translation of it would be “un-concealedness.” Heidegger understood this un-concealedness to be reality or things revealing different aspects of themselves to us at different times. Further, it was understood that this revealing of certain aspects was a simultaneous concealing (or at least drawing our focus away from) other aspects; in other words, things are always revealing and concealing different aspects of themselves in how they show up to us at different times—and we are awed in part by the seemingly inexhaustible nature of reality and things. As time goes on, reality proves to us that there was always more to be seen.
We only notice what is there to be seen on different occasions if we don’t suppose we’ve already got the answers all hashed out. In other words, we have to be open to wondering about something, even if that something is familiar. To hold ourselves open to wondering about things is to preserve life’s many mysteries as mysteries.