Not Knowing….Is it ok?

I started to appreciate how much I didn’t know some time ago, but only recently have I had the time to truly reflect on this.

As a newly qualified physiotherapist, I often worried that I did not know. It was like a mini-failure on my part. So many different thoughts popped into my head:

“What would my patient’s think?”

“What would my boss think?”

“All that university investment and I am still ‘not knowing’ something.”

And then I stopped. It dawned on me. How ignorant can I be?

The answer: VERY!

True ignorance is not realising your own ignorance. True ignorance is assuming that you should know, and therefore ignoring that you might not know.

To be completely unaware of your own lack of knowing is not only limiting, but dangerous. We only have to look at historical events in healthcare, science, transport, the justice system, politics and military intelligence to find examples of great catastrophes born from a human assumption of knowing things, without considering that we might not.

Okay, so I’ve read books. And lots of them. But does that really help me learn about real people in real situations. To quote from the film, Good Will Hunting (Van Sant, 1998);

Sean (to Will Hunting): “There’s nothing you can tell me that I can’t read somewhere else.”

I’m sure, at times, people I meet, my so called ‘patients’, have felt like saying this to me. Robin Williams portrays the character of Sean, a counsellor asked to work with the gifted yet non-collaberative Will, and beautifully conveys that to be truly human, to truly connect, is to surely to do more than read a book. It is about accepting that books aren’t knowledge. They are just things in a library. Pile them together and they represent how much we don’t know. University is not the factory of all knowledge, just an institution that helps us humbly realise how much there is for us yet to understand.

And ignorance? It isn’t as negative as it sounds. If we feel it is worth the effort, ignorance motivates us to learn more.

So next time you turn up at work, assume nothing, except that you know nothing. See every encounter as an opportunity to learn. See every person as knowing more about something of which you know very little. Work together to build something eclectic, unique, and you might feel a little bit more fulfilled than you ever thought possible.

References:

Van Sant, G. (1998). Good Will Hunting. Good Will Hunting (1997). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/

Bibliography and suggested reading:

Bishop, R., & Phillips, J. (2006). Ignorance. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2–3), 180–182. doi:10.1177/026327640602300232

Firestein, S. (2012). Ignorance: How it drives science. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Pomeroy, E. C., & Nonaka, A. M. (2011). The art of not knowing. Social Work, 56(4), 293–295. doi:10.1093/sw/56.4.293

Son, L. K., & Kornell, N. (2010). The virtues of ignorance. Behavioural Processes, 83(2), 207–212. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2009.12.005

Witte, C. L., Witte, M. H., & Kerwin, A. (1994). Ignorance and the process of learning and discovery in medicine. Controlled Clinical Trials, 15(1), 1–4. doi:10.1016/0197–2456(94)90020–5