I have to tell you a secret.
Or maybe it’s not a secret at all.
I have no idea what I am doing. Or where I’m going. Or how I’ll get there. Or even why.
For most of my life, I lived by very clear timelines. 4 years of college. 5 years of graduate school. 2 years of post-doc. Clear objectives. Clear Steps. A nice little gold star at the end.
From a very young age, we are taught to think in terms of “backwards design”. What is the objective? Where am I going? How do I get there?
As a professor of Early Childhood Education and Student Teacher Supervisor, I was required to teach teachers to lesson plan this way. I was told to teach them to tell young children to have a plan and a goal for their play.
I was, and still am, a part of an education system that largely indoctrinates us to discount the creative and the emergent in favor of the rational.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a lot of value in thinking through your intentions and desired outcomes before embarking on a task. There is value in planning, in thinking through steps and strategies, in having a road map and a destination.
The problem is not planning. The problem is the devaluation of the other way.
And there is another way.
The other way is much less linear, less quantifiable, less controlled.
It is the way of the inner wild.
It is the way that asks you to follow not your rational mind, but the gentle whispers of your intuition, the longings of your soul.
It is the way that asks you to trust..to trust yourself, to trust the Universe, to trust that inner voice that asks you to create, to express, to move towards what moves you without knowing why.
To the rational mind, it can be terrifying.
To the wild soul, it is enlivening.
We are taught that we always have to know..know the answer, know the next step, know the how and the why and way.
But what if the “I don’t know” is not failure, but spaciousness? What if the “I don't know” is where our creative force stirs, takes shape, moves us into our next becoming?
What if the road less traveled is the road that we create, one step at a time, when we stop planning out every moment of our lives and surrender to being guided by something bigger than the cute, safe, little plans of our overworked, exhausted minds?
I used to be terrified of the “I don’t know.” I was taught to get all A’s (and was terrified to come home if I didn’t). I was taught to be “smart”, to value rational decision making, and to be responsible.
Sometimes, it still scares me. Sometimes, my mind still asks “What are we doing? Why? What if we fail?? What if we don’t have enough? What if, what if, what if…?”
These days though, I’ve been listening more closely to the other part of me.
The part that hears “I don’t know” and gets excited. The part that makes decisions not based on what “makes sense” but based on the sensation of that inner YES.
The part of me that doesn’t care about what is nice, or responsible, or what looks good to others.
The part that knows the known paths are someone else’s, remembers that there are no right answers, and experiences the “I don’t know” not as stupidity, but as space.
Even now, writing this, there is a little voice that says "Are you sure you want to tell all these people you don't know? Won't they judge you? Mistrust you? Turn away?"
Maybe. Maybe some will. Part of trusting the process is the being okay with the losses too.
I trust that others will hear my persmission of my own not knowing, and feel a little more seen in theirs. Maybe, together, we can make it OK to not know.
I am not saying to throw away all plans, to pretend you know nothing, or to live with no goals at all.
But I am saying that if you are exploring or feel an urge to allow a part of yourself to try something new, to create, or to do something even though there is no clear “why” … to give yourself permission. To get cozy with the “I don’t know.” To trust.
Maybe even to do something you don’t know how to do on purpose, to forgo purpose completely and allow yourself to do something purely for the fun, the journey, and the wild silliness of it all.
What might you do when you give yourself permission to not know what you’re doing, and do it anyway?
With wild, curious, soul nurturing love,
Irena
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