Out of my Depth

I think the essential human experience is to be out of your depth.

My dad specializes in geostatistical error management. He literally wrote the book on the subject. I remember the first time I (tried) to read his book. The cover is lime-green & PowerPoint blue, deceivingly enticing colors to a ten-year-old. However, the pages therein greeted me with few words and a plethora of graphs. From that moment on I just assumed my dad was a statistical wizard who could transfigure soil-sampling data into spell-bound charts. Yet, I still wanted to know more about this world in which my dad felt so at home. It took me close to 20 years to actually (begin to) understand my father's work. On occasion, I will flip through Geostatistical Error Management just to immerse myself in a discipline I am only beginning to comprehend. But I'm still out of my depth.

I suppose the desire to be immersed in a discipline, a tradition, a relationship, a world, a time, an author, a cup of coffee, or a song came as natural to me as geostatistical error management felt foreign to me. From the desire for immersion arose the intuition that being out of my depth is not only a good place to be. It is actually the ideal place to be.

By being out of your depth, I mean you lack some key knowledge, experience, skill, or understanding to succeed in a particular situation. In the everyday, being out of your depth might be why you rarely raised your hand in classes. It may be why people feel the need to get a Ph.D. to have something worth saying. It is definitely why places like H&R Block exist.

In any situation, being out of your depth requires you to do two things: (1) affirm what you know, and (2) affirm that you don't know. Most of the time, we do one of these steps well. I feel completely competent & comfortable talking about Star Wars with any human being. I'm also equally ok admitting I have next to no knowledge of ballet. And in our world, we are often taught to play up your strengths & downplay your weaknesses. (So, you can bet I'm inclined to bring up Star Wars next time you talk to me in person.) But when you are out of your depth, you have to wrestle in the tension of your strengths and your weaknesses, what you are and what you are not yet. It is uncomfortable. It is also the only place you can grow.

For example, consider the word 'adulting'. People my age use this word to describe all the ways in which they are doing adult things: paying down student loans, making a budget, going to H&R Block, working a 9-5, sending thank-you notes, etc. If I am right, 'adulting' is a particular kind of being out of your depth. You know the kinds of things adults do, but you also feel a distinct lack of experience or knowledge to do adult things. 'Adulting' is trying to describe the gap between feeling like you are not yet an adult yet being required to do 'adult' things. I mean, to be an adult means you know what you're doing all the time.....right? There is indeed a huge gap between 'adulting' and being an adult, but not because adults know how to do everything. To be an adult means to understand & accept you are almost always out of your depth. To be an adult is to accept your strengths and weaknesses in every situation and still bear the responsibility of making a decision at the end of the day.

Now in anthropology, the term liminality describes spaces or rituals within a culture where to succeed in a task requires more than all of your previous experiences. Think of it as a threshold. In a liminal space, you are not-yet, yet asked to be. To succeed is to learn a new lesson, gain a new 'lens' which transforms everything (including yourself). These are the spaces where girls become women, boys become men, & Padawans become Jedi Knights. Perhaps 'adulting' is a new iteration of the liminal space. Perhaps it is a groan of whiny millennials. But in either case, the end goal is to become a particular kind of person, not merely do a particular kind of action. It is therefore not only an immersion, but also a baptism. You hope to come out of that situation/space/water changed.

Being out of your depth starts with immersion, recognizing who you are & what you know along with who you are not & what you don't know. It is the only space where baptism may take place. To immerse oneself into a discipline, a tradition, a relationship, a world, a time, an author, a cup of coffee, or a song is the beginning of a baptism. To immerse myself into the world of coffee is to become a coffee lover & a coffee maker. This is why contemplation was long considered the highest activity for human beings! To contemplate a thing is to be immersed, to be out of your depth, and (hopefully) find yourself changed on the other side.

In the end, I am not at home in geostatistical error management. My dad still seems like a statistical wizard in most ways to me. However, I am at home in the Church where I am, paradoxically, most out of my depth. It is here in Christ's Church where my baptism was only the beginning into a deeper immersion, a far more terrifying space where I am not yet & still called to be, affirming both what I know & what I know not. In every discussion, every song, every discipline, every project, I really hope I am out of my depth. Because it is the essential experience that beckons me to contemplate the eternal Triune God, in Whom I find my true home.