Three Words

What three words make up the scariest sentence known to humankind? 

I don’t know. 

(That’s the answer. I do know. I’m not scared at all right now because I know that the answer is “I don’t know.” See what I mean?) 

I was reminded of this as I watched one of our state’s most gifted leaders try to answer direct questions about how to re-build an energy strategy in a state rich in natural resources and a market demanding zero-emissions energy. After being besieged with questions about how we might do this, he calmly folded his hands, looked his inquisitors directly in the eye, and answered, “I don’t know. No one knows yet.” 

I realized when I heard him say that what a relief it is to just stop making stuff up. To cease with the false bravado, the toxic search for the only “right” answer. As soon as I had space to sit with not knowing what to do, my mind unclenched. And then a funny thing happened: I began to have ideas. 

The world as we knew it in 2019 is gone. Our assumptions about the right approach, the unwavering truths, the power of the superior individual have all been shattered too, though not everyone is able to accept the reckoning, the unpatterning. 

The thing that I noticed – slowly, because it takes time to reflect, to arrive at clarity – is that accepting that we don’t have definitive answers is not as scary or damaging as insisting that we do know when we don’t. This is a very old story. It is about an emperor and all the bad things that happen as a result of his nonexistent wardrobe. 

We are living through chaos and dislocation, beyond what most of us have ever experienced. I think it’s safe to say that every single one of us feels small, as powerless as the tiniest pawn on a vast chessboard. We seem to be a plaything for giant gods that jostle things around for sport or curiosity, to see what humans will do in the face of utter unknowing. Many of us are doing the same thing over and over and over, relentlessly reorganizing the chairs on the deck of the Titanic as every past certainty we’ve held collides with the giant iceberg of uncertainty and shatters. So begins order from chaos.

Recognizing all the answers that I don’t yet have broke a dam somewhere, and flooding forth were collections of words that came like commandments. I know that I am not alone in any of this. Each and every one of us is in this evolutionary shift together. I know that people are more good than not, even though the bad guys get all the headlines. I know that our community stood together on both sides of the street just days ago, by the thousands, different religions, ages, genders, opinions, races, and dreams, under the same flag, out of shared respect and heartache for a fallen young hero. Out of intense pain over the suffering of his family, the love of a country, the damn tragic shame that this young hero did not get to become an old man. 

I don’t know so much. I do know we sink or swim together. How we treat each other dictates how miserable or joyful the trip will be. It’s OK to not know things. But when we do learn them, it seems like a sacred privilege to take wise action.