The Courage to Not Know

Nobody likes not knowing.

We’ll take a bad answer over an open question almost every time. We’ll pick a side (any side) just to have somewhere to stand.

In a world of infinite color, somehow we have convinced ourselves we can only see in two.

Earlier today I sat in a circle with a group of young men who have been failed by more certainties than most of us will encounter in a lifetime. The exercise was simple, a list of questions about relationships. Reality or Myth?

Questions like: Does jealousy mean someone cares? Does being left on read mean someone doesn’t? Does showing off someone on social media mean the relationship is real? Does love mean sticking it out even if you’re unhappy? Can healthy love feel confusing?

Nobody agreed unilaterally on anything.

One person’s jealousy is proof of love. Another person’s jealousy is proof of insecurity. Both of them had valid arguments. Neither of them chose the history that taught them which was which.

And then the boy sitting next to me leaned over, sort of suspicious, and asked: “Wait… are they all real or are they all myths?”

I told him there was no right answer.

Pick a Side

Somewhere along the way we were trained out of ambiguity. School did some of it and our families did more. Trauma, sometimes, did the rest.

Are we aware of how much of what we believe we actually chose?

The positions we hold most fiercely: politically, professionally, spiritually, relationally are almost never the result of deliberate thought. They are the result of who we were surrounded by, what we survived, what we inherited. 

They are usually the echo of whoever loved us first, or whoever or whatever hurt us most.

Left or right, sacred or profane, toxic or healthy, us or them.

Are we often times obligated to pick a side?

Because the moment we commit to a side, the way society rewards us for committing, we begin pushing away everything that contradicts it. The beautiful part that doubts. The part that wonders.

Or is it that we are afraid that if we don’t, we might discover we’ve been wrong about something that has defined most of our lives, most of our identity?

The Trade Off

The binary isn’t truth.

It’s how systems manage complexity that would otherwise overwhelm us. You can’t run an election in the gray zone. You can’t write a headline in ambiguity. So we built structures that flattened the world into something manageable.

But what if the middle is actually where most of reality lives?

What if the most honest thing any of us could say about most things is: Well, it depends. Maybe both things are true. Maybe it’s not that simple. And what if saying that isn’t a failure of conviction but instead an act of genuine courage in a world that rewards certainty and punishes nuance?

Those teenagers in that circle, kids the world has already filed into categories were the most genuinely curious people I’d been around all week. Surprising each other. Saying wait, but what about this? There was something in that room we tend to lose as we get older but I believe we can take it back.

• The willingness to not know some things for certain.
• The willingness to say “I was wrong”.
• The willingness to hold an idea loosely enough that you can actually examine it.

The Impact of the Under-qualified

And then something happened at the end of our visit.

As we gathered for our usual debrief before leaving, one of our mentor leaders shared something the director of therapy had told him. The fact that they open up to you guys is enormous. A lot of them don’t open up to us.

We are not therapists, we have zero hours of clinical training. We just show up. Ordinary, imperfect, and admittedly under qualified.

I think I may have part of the answer.

We don’t provide a secure office space. We don’t arrive with a plan or a clinical framework. We don’t represent a system that has already decided who they are, what they’re worth and we don’t carry a file with a diagnosis.

We show up and then we figure it out. Standing, walking, sitting, sometimes on the floor or leaning against a wall. Sometimes in a group, sometimes one on one. Sometimes through an activity, and other times through nothing at all. And they get to show up exactly as they are: messy, loud, unfiltered, chaotic, imperfect. Nobody is asking them to demonstrate growth or arrive at a conclusion.

So maybe that’s it.

Because we exist in a space that is neither what they’ve always known. Nor what they encounter clinically, structured, scheduled and intentional. We are somewhere in between.

The work being done clinically gives them language and tools. What happens with us extends that into lived interaction. It lets them try on honesty without consequence. It lets them exist without being reduced to a case, but also without being left alone.

Not in the expert’s office but also not in the wreckage of abandonment.

The End

The pressure to pick a side on everything, immediately and loudly is intense. And the cost is the erosion of our capacity to think in the full dimensionality of what we actually are.

We are not left or right. We are not the sum of our loudest opinions. We are, if we’re honest, a constantly shifting, contradicting, evolving collection of experiences and inheritances and half formed ideas we are still in the process of becoming.

What if the bravest position any of us could take on occasion is

I’m not entirely sure. And I’m staying open.

And before the objection forms, this isn’t a case against conviction.

Some things are worth defending, some lines are real and some values are non negotiable. There is a difference between a belief you’ve examined and one you’ve simply made yours. The difference between an idea you’ve wrestled with and one you’ve never questioned.

There’s something beautiful about the scientist who treats every theory as a living thing, as something to tinker with, test, challenge, rebuild. Not because they lack conviction but because they understand that the closest we ever get to truth is through the willingness to question it. Even our own.

Which brings me back to the gray, to the middle. To the place where most of us live but are afraid to admit.

What’s more powerful? an idea defended to the last dying breath? Or the ability to stay open, imaginative, adaptable and alive to the possibility that neither side has the full picture, that the world isn’t black or white? That what we’ve been fighting over might only be fragments of something more complex than any of us have been willing to admit?