Want To Know Everything? Perhaps It’s Best If You Don’t

If we want to build a amended life, we person to beryllium capable to not know. Does that sound confusing? Perhaps you don’t cognize what I’m talking about? Good! That’s awesome practice.

If you cannot tolerate not knowing, you tally nan consequence of arranging your life truthful you tin cognize everything (or astatine slightest effort to), and you whitethorn extremity up sapping your beingness of immoderate spontaneity and joy. You don’t ever person nan acquisition of exploring a caller spot and discovering thing exciting, because you’ve already Googled it. And you don’t springiness a caller narration a chance to create because you’ve already written that personification off. You scheme nan life retired of your life, and your only enjoyment comes from things moving retired precisely arsenic you knew they would.

Being capable to not know, for nan writer John Keats (and nan psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion who quoted him), intends being “capable of being successful uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without immoderate irritable reaching aft truth and reason”. It gives emergence to a authorities of mind successful which your thoughts tin rotation and wonder, you tin beryllium curious, person feelings, and retired of those feelings tin turn thoughts, and you tin dream and trial retired ideas and explore.

It sounds good, for illustration a profound soul freedom. But that is not really it feels to me.

I dislike not knowing. I’ve ever been much inclined to irritably scope aft truth and reason. It is bad capable erstwhile I don’t cognize thing that I will yet know: waiting for exam results, aliases to perceive backmost from a occupation interview, mounting a timer for a gestation trial – each of these experiences is excruciating for me. I utilized to necktie myself into each sorts of knots, convincing myself that I knew nan consequence would beryllium nan bad one, to protect myself from nan not knowing and nan imaginable for disappointment.

But moreover worse is nan benignant of not knowing wherever location is nary correct answer, wherever it is simply a mobility of judgement and balancing different difficult outcomes – wherever nary 1 tin show you what to do. The only measurement to past and turn done this is to get amended astatine not knowing.

I learned this done nan acquisition of becoming a mother. I retrieve my bully friend telling maine that I had to study to fto spell of knowing what’s going to hap successful gestation and study to thrust nan wave, because this was 1 lawsuit wherever I really couldn’t know. (This, by nan way, is nan worst for maine – erstwhile personification knows thing I don’t know.)

My 3rd trimester and my daughter’s commencement were peppered pinch emergencies that turned retired not to beryllium emergencies, and past immoderate actual, terrifying emergencies. One expert would show america that nan babe had to travel retired right now – only for different expert to show america we could wait. It was highly anxiety-provoking and bad for my already precocious humor pressure. However, what disturbed maine nan astir was 1 master seeming to know, only for different master to look to cognize nan nonstop opposite.

I hated not knowing and not being capable to spot nan group who were expected to cognize – not knowing why cipher seemed to know. But 1 thoughtful clinician explained to maine that, for my peculiar lawsuit of pre-eclampsia, doctors knew that earlier 34 weeks gestation, if imaginable it was mostly amended to support nan babe in; and aft 37 weeks gestation it was mostly safer to return nan babe retired – but betwixt 34 and 37 nan grounds was hotly debated, and each expert would shape a different position based connected their objective experience, their individual consequence tolerance and their ain judgment. So cipher knew. It helped maine erstwhile I understood that.

Before training to go a psychodynamic psychotherapist, I didn’t moreover cognize I couldn’t not know. Even though my hubby told maine again and again (and continues to do so) really irritating it is that I ever person to cognize everything and that I enactment for illustration I do, I thought it was his problem that he didn’t admit and worth my marvellous breadth of knowledge.

But erstwhile I began training arsenic a psychotherapist, and I besides became a diligent successful psychoanalysis, it very soon became clear that my knowingness was not a valuable characteristic trait, but a protect strategy, and a very mediocre 1 astatine that. I knew things – I planned for things, I learned things, I sewage bully astatine things – to debar not knowing things. I thought I knew – but, successful reality, I didn’t understand.

The problem pinch knowing everything arsenic a protect strategy is that it is highly ineffective. As good arsenic being impossible, it really makes you consciousness overmuch worse. If you deliberation it is your occupation to cognize everything, past erstwhile reality hits, you find yourself emotion for illustration a failure. “If only I’d known!” Ha. No. If only you’d been capable not to know.

So I stay successful a process of processing a capacity not to know. It has been years but it’s still early days. I still find it agonising, I still dislike it, but I americium amended capable to tolerate it – astatine moments. I’ve had to get amended astatine it because it is nan astir valuable point I tin connection my patients – my expertise to carnivore not knowing and to beryllium interested.

It’s nan astir important capacity to turn for my child, because I don’t cognize truthful overmuch and she needs maine to past that. It is important for being successful interaction pinch reality, for building a amended life, and a freer mind. It is unfortunate, but I person had to concede that this was 1 uncommon juncture connected which my hubby was right.