Not-Knowing

I’ve never thought that “not-knowing” was a thing. (It’s a thing).

Not-knowing is not the same as ignorance. It has very little to do with intelligence; very smart people can still not-know many things. And I’m beginning to believe that the smartest people are the ones who recognize how much they don’t know and seek to learn more by embracing all of the not-knowing that abounds in the enormous world around them.

I’ve always thought that being successful meant that you knew a lot of things. You read all the books, see all the movies, get all the degrees, and make all of the career advancements. You figure out what you’re good at and how you can make lots of money doing the thing you’re good at, or reach some level of prestige in that area. You make someone fall in love with you by showing how much you know about life; you show you know how to be desirable. You know who you are and how to be what you should become, and that’s how you achieve everything there is to achieve.

You just know everything because not-knowing would mean failure or the possibility of rejection. You never let them see you not-know, because who knows what would happen if they did.

After 24 years of constantly trying to know, know, know, I find myself in a season where I have no choice but to not-know, and it’s scary as fuck.

I’m changing careers and learning something entirely new. I’m going through a 3-month Software Engineering bootcamp, followed by a year-long fellowship as an associate developer. Software Engineering is a field where being comfortable with errors and confusion is basically required; developer friends have told me over and over again that they are constantly learning new things, making mistakes, and fixing those mistakes to make something useful. These (smart, capable) people regularly find themselves in conversations with colleagues who bring up terms they’ve never heard before … and as a result they must admit their not-knowing outrightly and ask for explanations, or look it up later from the safety of their own laptop.

Within the first few days of the program, I have already experienced numerous failures. Fortunately, most of them are are laughable. Today in class we played a game where the user had to direct a panda through a maze using JavaScript. If you wrote an error, the panda would waddle off the path of the maze and tumble haphazardly down your screen: my pair programming partner and I couldn’t stop giggling about it.

Just when you think you know all there is to know, you’ll wake up the next morning to an abundance of everything new there is to discover, things you could have never imagined before. It’s frustrating and exciting and terrifying all at once. It makes me feel like a little pixelated panda tumbling down a computer screen.

Not-knowing how stimuli will affect your emotions can feel debilitating at times. I never know what will trigger memories of traumatizing events. So far, it’s ranged from being stuck in a too-crowded elevator, to someone tapping on my car window, to being within earshot of loud, unexpected shouting. I can’t predict what will incite the panic and almost inexplicable terror within me, and though there are days when I wish I could just avoid discomfort by never leaving my room again, it’s not really a viable option; going out into the world not-knowing what’s in store is the risk I have to take.

Recently, a friend and former co-worker took a huge risk that’s been wonderful to witness. Emily has been documenting her trip around the world in beautifully-written posts on her blog. In one of her recent posts, she perfectly describes and embodies the idea of not-knowing:

“It’s like this: You expect that during the almost year-long preproduction of a trip like this, at some point you will have sufficiently researched destinations and tactics and customs, and when that scale tips, you will evolve like a Pokemon into a Good Traveler. But then that point never comes, and suddenly you find yourself out in the world with a map in your hands and an iPhone on airplane mode and an overwhelming sense that you are not ready, that you are doing this thing wrong. But you pack a lunch and grab your best friend’s hand and go out and do it anyway, and even if you both feel a little like frauds, at least you’re frauds together. At least it doesn’t actually matter.

Humility is what I’m holding close to my heart. If we’re chasing something at all out here, it’s the chance to learn. We’re figuring out how to travel and expecting to make mistakes, and so long as we mind the gap between what we think we know and what we don’t yet know, I think we’ll be alright”

You should read the rest of the post for context, but also just because she’s an incredible writer and you’ll be a better person for it. The crux of the matter here is that most of the time, whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re all walking around not-knowing all over the place. You can try to prepare for Life and still find yourself wandering around, wondering how you got to where you are and where it is you’ll end up next.

I don’t really know what home is. LA isn’t my home, but North Carolina isn’t really either. I don’t know where I’ll end up. I don’t know if I’ll get married. I don’t know what exactly my job will be a year from now. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel completely confident about what it is I believe spiritually (mostly because there is so much that I don’t know and can never fully know).

This is not the life I had planned for myself as a 10-year-old living in suburban Ohio — the life I had planned for myself was much smaller and safer. It was a life which assumed I would always get what I want, and that I would never get hurt. Ultimately, it would have been one lived in a vacuum, devoid of the rich adventures, incredible people, and formative, yet difficult, experiences to be had along the way. I couldn’t have known what this life would look like back then, but I’m excited to see what’s to come in the future.

And right now I’m okay with not-knowing.