I Don't Know.

One of the many, many topics I’ve heard Matt Kahn discuss in his wonderful YouTube videos is that we humans refuse to admit we don’t know. We hardly EVER say “I don’t know.”

In my humble and accurate opinion, it’s yet another way our modern Western culture refuses to allow us to be human. People today are apparently supposed to be know-it-alls.

We’re supposed to know what car we want to drive, how much money we want to make doing which career, we’re supposed to know how many kids we want to have and who our ideal mate is, we’re supposed to know exactly what our life is going to look like in 5 years and again in 10, and we’re supposed to know how to get every single one of these things.

We’re supposed to have everything wired, everything under control.

I don’t know about you, but that kind of life has only ever made me feel anxious and oppressed. Because a lot of the time, I DON’T know these things. And even when I do start to identify what I want in life, I don’t always know how I’m going to get them or make them happen.

And it becomes more and more clear to me as I get older that there’s so much of our lives we can’t and don’t know – whether or not we admit it. The most powerful and most basic aspect of life that is unknowable is – are we even going to be here tomorrow?

We assume we will. We assume we’ll wake up tomorrow morning and act according to the same habits we acted upon today. Kiss the partner goodbye, drop the kids at school, go to work, come home. Feed the pet, go to bed, do it all again.

But the truth is, we don’t know we’ll be here tomorrow. We could have an aortic or brain aneurysm and be gone in an instant. We could meet with a nasty freak accident on the way to or from somewhere.

Heart attack.

Natural disaster.

Terrorism.

I believe the world is more magic than science wants to admit. I … FEEL magic in the world. It is as real to me as the ground beneath my feet and the air in my lungs.

So many things are unexplainable even in science – science can go up to a point, and then even its rationality and empirical study must admit that it doesn’t know what comes after.

But when science says “I don’t know,” this is said with what feels like shame. As if it’s some sort of failure to not know everything about everything.

I admit that uncertainty and the condition of not-knowing can be frightening. I’ve certainly been in that mind-set for most of my life, due to the cultural conditioning most of us receive from the cradle. I continue to feel fear when I step a toe outside my comfort zone and take a risk.

But as I advance on my spiritual journey, as I heal and get to know myself on ever-deepening levels, I come to see there is so much freedom in admitting “I don’t know.”

Where will I be in 5 years? I don’t know. I could be dead.

Could be married. Could be in the job of my dreams. Could be on a wildlife refuge in South Africa.

I don’t know.

The older I get the more I look upon the world with eyes that aren’t looking through the lens of modern culture, and the more I feel freedom and exciting possibility in saying “I don’t know.”

20 years ago I never dreamed I would have spirit encounters. Why do I have them? I don’t know. Where do they come from exactly? I don’t know.

Why is the world in the state it’s in? I don’t know. Will it get better? I don’t know, but I believe it will. Over time.

Why do I feel a pull from Mother Nature deep in my belly? Why do I feel a sense of connection with people I’ve never met?

I don’t know.

Why do I feel energy coming off people like waves and others are oblivious?

I don’t know.

Why am I filled with an absolute, immutable, inarguable knowingness that there is a Greater Power out there, while others believe the polar opposite?

I don’t know.

And I’m learning to celebrate that.