Just because we’re alive, it doesn’t entitle us to know what life’s all about.

Just because we are made entirely of stardust, it doesn’t prove that there’s nothing more to us.  

Just because we have explanations for the way thing are, it doesn’t mean that we have explained them. 

Just because we can talk about reality, it doesn’t mean we can talk ourselves into it. 

Just because we can see that effects depend on causes, it doesn’t mean that either the cause or the effect explains the difference.

Just because we can equate one thing to another, it doesn’t make them the same.  

Just because we use logic to understand nature, it doesn’t mean that nature is logical.

Just because the stars in the sky are ‘there’ doesn’t mean they are really there.

Just because we know reality as we know it, it doesn’t mean that we really know it.

Just because life is ‘uploaded’ from what ‘is’ already (qua physical necessity), it doesn’t mean that it is not also ‘downloaded’ from what ‘isn’t’ – ‘impossibilities’ becoming possible (qua unrealised potentials).

Just because we haven’t solved the meaning of life, it doesn’t mean that life is necessarily meaningless: it could be that there is more to life and meaning than our narrow version of it – that even the ‘meaningless expanse’ of the universe is a line-of-sight effect – a figment of a narrowed view of what is there to be seen of what can be.

Just because we know what we mean, it doesn’t mean that we know how to say it.

Mike Laidler