Survival Strategy: Surrender to Not Knowing

You don’t have to know everything about everything all the damn time.

Image by kinkate from Pixabay

Welcome to your Saturday Side Quest.

Side Quest (noun), as defined by the Urban Dictionary: An impromptu adventure or diversion undertaken by an individual, typically outside the realm of one’s primary goals or responsibilities, often characterized by spontaneous actions and unconventional activities.

Hello and welcome to your weekend! Thanks for sharing a bit of it with me.

I am endlessly amused by the many ways in which art imitates life and life imitates art.

Take this week, for example.

On Monday we kicked things off with Qveen Herby’s song, “We Got This.” One verse in the lyrics jumped out at me:

Bitch, we got this
I'ma sit back and enjoy the process
I don’t know what the plot is
It’s a collab with a higher goddess

I’m in a place in my life right now where I definitely don’t know what the plot is. I’m doing my damndest to sit back and enjoy the process, but it ain’t easy. As much as we want to think we’re evolved enough to embrace the chaos and uncertainty that are part and parcel of living through “unprecedented” times, most of us are ill-equipped to do so.

And even if we weren’t living in these particular times — even if things were relatively quiet and “normal” (whatever that means) — life has a habit of pitching curve balls when we least expect them.

Happily, life also has a way of dropping what Pam Grossman, host of The Witch Wave podcast, likes to call “cosmic breadcrumbs.” (Isn’t that delightful?) I found one such breadcrumb in

Chris Riddell

’s Notes post about his BBC Sunday feature about Edward Gorey:

… which ultimately inspired Thursday’s piece about Edward Gorey, his art and his stories, and how — often — the best part of a work of art is not how it provides answers, but how it inspires questions.

I have a lot of questions these days, and precious few answers. As someone who is a bit of a control freak, that doesn’t feel great. It feels almost shameful, in this age of all-knowing computers and such, to have to say, “I don’t know.”

But, last time I checked, I’m not a computer, and I’m guessing you’re not either. We are humans. We aren’t meant to know everything about everything all the damn time and on demand.

There is a huge relief in being able to admit that, actually, we have no idea what’s going on or what to do next. Try it. You might find your feet levitating off the ground just a bit.

When you surrender to not knowing, not only do you get to put down the burden of constantly having to have answers for everything (exhausting!), you also get to let go of expectations and assumptions.

To be clear, I’m not saying that knowledge, expectations, or assumptions are intrinsically bad. Not at all. But sometimes (let’s be honest — a lot of the time) they are more of a hinderance than a help when it comes to living your best life.

When you KNOW something — and therefore feel very CERTAIN about your assumptions and expectations around that thing — you become blind to all other possibilities. You stop asking questions. You stop seeing what’s right in front of you. You start defining your world in terms of what you ASSUME is possible (the very narrow range of options based on what you think you know) and what you assume is impossible (literally everything else).

Art that challenges your assumptions about what you think you know can open your eyes to a whole new way of seeing not only the world around you, but also the options in front of you.

And art like Edward Gorey’s — art that doesn’t even pretend to make any sense at all — takes things a step beyond broadening your horizons. It begins to make us question why we’re trying to nail down answers in the first place. After all, life is not a puzzle to be solved. It’s an experience to be lived. There is no one right answer, so why do we spend so much time worrying about doing it wrong? (But maybe that’s a conversation for another day.)

My friend

Cathy Joseph

summed all this up very nicely in her comment on Thursday’s post:

“… if I hear, ‘we can't do something because of yada, yada, yada,’ I'll accept that as the speaker's truth but then start exploring options. Possibilities start to flow and those pose questions for me. ‘What if…??’”

What if, indeed.

Those two little words are like a key to another reality.

Your Saturday Side Quest, should you choose to accept the challenge, is:

Admit you don’t know something and then ask, “What if?”

That’s it. It’s a baby step, but it might be just the thing to help you leap past some roadblock that you assumed was insurmountable.

✨ Bonus Points: Share what you discover (or any random observations on this idea) in the comments. We’re all a nice bunch here. No one will bite.

Thanks, as always, for being here. So lovely to have you along on this weird little journey.

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