The problem with a culture that believes as wholeheartedly as ours does that science and reason are the only ways to speak about truth, is that we have no equipment to deal with life’s most fundamental experiences: love, wonder and pain.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for science, it happens to be my day job. If you want to know how far away the moon is, or understand how atoms behave, or tweak the algorithm so that we all spend half our lives watching videos of cats, then science is your guy. 

 

But what about love? 

 

How do you know if it’s true that you love someone? And, if said person happens to be going through the mill right now, what is the process for understanding why?

 

Science has no equipment to deal with these questions. It limits itself to things that can be measured and, as neither love nor suffering is measurable, it sensibly leaves them well alone. The trouble is, in an age where the success of vaccines, space rockets and supercomputers has convinced us that science is the only way to talk about truth, the fact that it has nothing to say about love makes us start to suspect that there might actually be no such thing. 

 

Mystery is not an alternative method for getting at the truth. It’s not about trying a different set of measurements. Instead, it acknowledges that the truth may well be beyond our tiny little minds. Mystery is a way of holding contradictions together without going mad. It’s a way of saying: “Ok. Yes, I can be with this. Even if it makes no sense.” It doesn’t replace science or reason. It completes them. It’s the space that allows wonder, humility, and connection to exist.

 

To some, this will seem like a cosmic cop out. Something like a shrug in your maths exam. But to others, it is a way of opening the door again to things like joy and wonder. A way for rational understanding and emotional understanding to both sit in the front seat, without secretly believing that one has more right to the steering wheel than the other; a way for us to believe once again in that most fundamental human experience: love.