Mind Games
The Art of Not Knowing
The humbling power of ‘I don’t know’
It snowed yesterday, even though it’s the middle of spring. Flurries are working themselves into a tizzy today, too. I packed only a single sweater in the two suitcases I lugged across the country with me.
I’ve worn it every day for the past week.
I am unemployed, with absolutely no idea what sort of employment I’d like to pursue. My bank account is a wasteland, and I’m sniffling into my phone outside a cafe where I just purchased a $7 macadamia-milk latte. I am having a meltdown.
“I just want someone to tell me what to do!” I sob, overdramatic as always.
“I’m hearing that,” my mother responds, perpetually patient with my petulance. She then leaves the airspace between us infuriatingly vacant, waiting for me to fill it.
Reluctantly, I collect myself and sigh, “They’re not going to, though.”
“No,” she confirms.
Some days, I really wish they would.
Succulent is the satisfaction of having the answers. To know, and to have known — all along, perhaps — is our baseline of control. If we know something to be true, or if we make it true in our minds, we then hold power over it. Depending on our will, we can…
