How You Handle Not Knowing is a Choice
Knowledge is power; but not knowing can be empowering.
I love learning. There is always something new to be learned in this world. Long after formal schooling, I find researching and learning new things lights me up and excites me.
Everyone is constantly learning. That’s because of this truth: Change is the one and only constant in the universe. Change happens, and it happens all the time.
You’ve changed. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, but undoubtedly, you’ve changed. You were once an infant, then a toddler, an adolescent, a teen, and then an adult. All of these reflect inevitable, ineffable change. As a result of that, you’ve learned.
For some, school was torture. The endless classes, books, lessons, tests, and other formalities of schooling make for unpleasant memories. For others, school was just the beginning of lifelong learning. There’s no right or wrong to this, but it makes me sad that too many people take issue with education and learning. Knowledge is power, but it’s not a one-and-done thing. There’s always something new to learn.
Recognizing and acknowledging this opens you to being empowered. Learning is empowering. And learning begins by recognizing and acknowledging not knowing.
Everyone handles not knowing things differently. And that’s a choice. How you approach it often determines many aspects of your life experience.
It’s important to begin this, however, by acknowledging a predominant attitude in the world today.
Not knowing isn’t a bad thing
Nobody knows everything. How can they? There are so many topics, ideas, concepts, sciences, people, places, and things, that it’s utterly impossible to know everything. More than that, there are always new things to be learned.
When I was a teen, personal computers were just coming into their own. I was 13 when I got my first real computer, an Apple IIe. For college, I upgraded to my first PC. The iPhone sitting beside my keyboard here is exponentially more powerful than both of those, and probably the next decade of those that followed, combined. The iPhone and similar tech came about because new technologies were learned.
Yet the idea of not knowing is frequently framed as something to be avoided. Look at Trump. He cannot acknowledge he doesn’t know something without it making him more despondent. He must know, because otherwise he’s lesser in his own eyes. Probably why he invents his own reality where he’s the ultimate font of all wisdom and knowledge.
The truth is that not knowing is a fact of life. Nobody knows everything because that’s not possible. There’s too much information for anyone to know everything. And that’s great. Why? Because not knowing is a learning and empowering opportunity.
Active learning is empowering
More than being power, knowledge empowers. The act of actively learning is done with conscious awareness and forethought.
For example, while working on one of my sci-fi novels, I wanted to utilize semi-plausible faster-than-light travel. There are many fictional options out there, but also a scientific theory postulated by Miguel Alcubierre. Though still impractical and unusable in our current state of tech, it’s not implausible that his theory of how to warp space/time could work.
I went down a rabbit hole researching this and learned a lot about physics, time, and space. To learn more, I read Einstein, Hawking, Tyson, Al-Khalili, and others. Do I fully understand these sciences? No. But I am still fascinated by them, and continue to love learning about these ideas.
If I don’t understand, how is it empowering? Because I can choose and/or decide to learn more. I can take not knowing and use it as a starting point to seek and find more information and more knowledge. That’s empowering because choosing to learn means being here, now, and directing some of my personal growth and evolution.
Active learning is empowering because it’s done mindfully. A choice and/or decision is made, consciously, to expand your knowledge-base. Even when what you find doesn’t change anything, the flexing of your mindfulness muscle makes you stronger overall.
This is where the whole anti-woke movement confounds me. How is it even remotely a bad thing to be more aware and awake to the world around us? Scarier? Maybe. But knowing that you don’t know can be a door to growth – or to stagnation and entropy. That’s the choice. But that’s why active learning is empowering.
Not knowing can be a choice
Some say ignorance is bliss. I agree that there are times when this is true. But it’s still a choice. For me, I’m incredibly ignorant of celebrity gossip and reality TV. And I feel blissful in that ignorance because that knowledge has zero meaning for me.
Mindfulness? Conscious reality creation? Physics? Psychology? Sociology? I would find no bliss in ignorance of these. But while I know a little (and sometimes a lot) about these topics, I know there’s far, far more I don’t know. But that means there’s more to learn.
Mastery and expertise have their place. But even the greatest masters and most renowned experts recognize and acknowledge that there are things they don’t know. Not knowing is seen not as a weakness, but a strength. That’s because it shows room to grow, to learn, to evolve, and to do something to move the needle of change.
For all the things I love to learn, there are things I couldn’t give a shit about. In that respect, not knowing is a choice because those things mean nothing to me. However, and this is important, just because I don’t care about them doesn’t mean they’re not something to others. So, I don’t disrespect the knowledge of others and the fact that they know things I don’t (this doesn’t mean, however, I respect BS opinions with zero facts, figures, or reason to back them).
How you handle not knowing is a choice. Learn about this, or don’t, via active conscious awareness. Mindfulness applied is always empowering. And when you’re empowered, you surpass limitations because you reset them.
For all I know, there’s more I don’t know. And that means there are new and potentially exciting things to learn. Scary? Sometimes. But more often than not, that’s exciting.
How do you approach knowing and not knowing things?
This is the seventh-hundred-seventy-fourth (774) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share my philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to share and/or repost where it might do good for you and others.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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