It’s okay not to know.
Society trains us from an early age to know. Know about anything and everything. And if we don’t know how something works, we are taught to find out. If we don’t know how to do anything, we are taught to find out. We are never taught to sit in the feeling of ‘I don’t know’.
Not knowing is okay.
Not knowing who you are, not knowing where you’re going, not knowing how you’ll get there, and not knowing when change will happen is all okay.
Yet we are definitely programmed to resist not knowing at all costs. We feel helpless in the state of uncertainty, even though uncertainty is a given and the only thing ever certain in life is uncertainty.
In my yoga class this past week, our focus was just this. It was as if my yoga teacher had been reading my mind. We breathed into different poses by mentally saying, ‘I am here’ and as we breathed out, ‘I don’t know, and that’s okay’.
How many of us can give ourselves permission to not know?
When we are going through life-altering experiences like the loss of a loved one, moving home, divorce, loss of a job, or health deteriorating it is at these times that we tend to grab on for dear life. We grip and cling to the known, try and work things out, and try and anticipate what is coming next. We worry, we fear, but what we really need more than anything is to feel and be okay with ‘I don’t know’.
‘Zero Circle’ by Rumi
Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.
We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
If we say we can, we’re lying.
If we say No, we don’t see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.
So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.
………………………..
I sit with the deep desire to move house. My intellect does not know how to do this right now. So I lay in wait in this uncertain space, not knowing how, and this too is okay.
Are you able to be with not knowing?
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Kelly Martin, author of ‘When Everyone Shines But You’ is a dedicated writer and blogger who fearlessly explores life’s deepest questions. Faced with a decade of profound anxiety and grief following the loss of her father and her best friend Michael, Kelly embarked on a transformative journey guided by mindfulness, and she hasn’t looked back since. Through her insightful writing, engaging podcasts, and inspiring You Tube channel Kelly empowers others to unearth the hidden treasures within their pain, embracing the profound truth that they are ‘enough’ exactly as they are.
