Did you know confusion is useful?
I’ll never forget when I learned that “I have no idea” was a real, legitimate answer. It never occurred to me that uncertainty, ambivalence, not knowing, were respectable, honest states of thought and feeling. For me, it honestly felt like a miracle. I guess from a young age, I felt to be taken seriously, I had to either know, guess an answer, or pretend.
“I don’t know” can be self-kindness
When you don’t know that confusion is legitimate, like I did, you often develop tools to cover or avoid it, which keeps your suffering out of your awareness and you stay in a fog much longer.
Ironically, validating that “I don’t know,” is a real state of being, and giving yourself empathy, patience and support, you can start to figure things out more quickly.
“I don’t know” is the beginning of change
“I am not sure” is often a prelude state, before processing what is needed to get from your present to your future. It’s also a warm up period, collecting energy and new ideas, researching possible points of entry to begin traveling deeper into your own feelings.
You, like a million others, may be starting your travels in fog, that’s okay. You have more navigation inside than you might have had time to realize before.
In times of “I don’t know,” I have learned to trust in what the poet Rumi says,
“ Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
