I don't know very much.

If there is anything I've learned in my life, it's how little I really know.

I think I know a lot of things.

Back in the day, when I first came to college, I thought I knew a great deal, but I was very wrong. I knew what was Right and what was Wrong and it was all quite clear. As I went through college, I learned that I was wrong. That the beliefs I'd learned were not necessarily true. I learned to be a more tolerant person and to be less judgmental about the way other people choose to live their lives.

Not that it always stops me from being judgmental of course, because I can be a real bitch, but at least I try now. The arrogance of assuming I know what is best without regard to individuality and circumstances outside my understanding is gone, more often than not. Or at least, I try to correct it when I realize it's creeping in.

Since getting pregnant multiple times, I've learned the same thing again and again. I think I've learned to be more compassionate, but some days the extent of it is questionable. I certainly have learned it is ok to stand up for what I need and to speak my truth as a truth, recognizing that not everyone's truth is the same.

And I've learned again how very little I truly know. I don't know, not really, what the right thing is to say to someone who has just learned their baby has no heartbeat. I don't know how to comfort someone who is going through what could be considered a living nightmare of carrying a live child and a dead one. I can't really understand how it is to go full term and lose your child or to be knifed in the heart by hope in the NICU.

Life really is a humbling experience. I do know many things, but not all things. I do know far more about conception and pregnancy than your average person, and less than many. I know far more about potential losses than most would care to. And I know all the knowledge in the world means nothing when it butts up against real life being lived, because it only enables you to understand the mechanics of what is happening, but not the why of it. Not the way to prevent it.

Life is an amazing thing isn't it? So fragile, so persistent. Humanity seems wrapped up in an object that can't be seen, and yet it is difficult to refute the existence of a soul, at least in some fashion. Sometimes, when I ponder these things, I have a fleeting image of myself sitting on a cliff, wind whipping around me, hugging my knees as I watch a sun set or rise over a vastness. And I wonder if that glimpse is the key to understanding eternity.

I wish I could focus on that more than on the mundane. But alas, I cannot. Apart from the everyday drudgery of like - work, maintenance, bills - there are the secret stirrings which I can't turn away from. The battle of hope and disbelief playing out in front of me, and inside me. The reality of the perpetuation of life, meeting up with the reality of biology and all the time, I can't tear myself away.

I want to know, now. And I can't know now. I can't control. I can't will it to be. I can only watch and wait. Perhaps I'm becoming ever so slightly more comfortable in the waiting. But only perhaps.