“I don’t know.”

For years those three syllables felt like pulling the fire alarm inside my chest: instant sirens, flashing lights, and the panicked scramble to look competent at all costs. In a boardroom full of sharp suits and sharper expectations, my job (or so I believed) was to offer answers the way a surgeon offers steady hands: flawlessly, on demand, no tremor of uncertainty. I wore confidence like body armor, yet under the polished plates lived a child who once walked on eggshells, listening for the next emotional eruption so she could patch the air with the perfect sentence and keep the family breathing.

Photo not cited from Nature Journal 2016

Carl Jung wrote, “Where we stumble and fall is where we find the pure gold.” The boardroom was my stumble: every spreadsheet, every strategy session, a fresh chance to reenact the heroic child, the fixer who made everything feel safe by knowing. Jung reminds me that the gold is rarely in the perfect answer; it’s in the noticing, the pattern‑spotting, the moment the old story finally blinks in the fluorescent light and admits it’s tired.

Here’s what I’ve learned: people who chase control are really begging for security. The problem is that control is a fickle bodyguard; it works overtime yet can’t promise peace. Security, I discovered later, comes from something wilder and more generous, what Gabor Maté calls “connection with our true selves and with others.” When I stepped into my role as a graduate professor guiding teachers in the art of praxis, I felt that connection like warm current beneath the surface. I loved the work, loved the questions, loved how the classroom hummed when a student said, “Wait—what if we tried it this way?” My security was no longer tethered to knowing; it flowed from being saturated in purpose, from trusting the larger intelligence that holds us all.

Of course, fear doesn’t pack its bags just because wisdom moves in. It still shows up, taps me on the shoulder, asks if I’ve really prepared enough. But something crucial shifted: the shame stayed behind in childhood. These days fear travels with two steady companions: Curiosity and Trust. Curiosity leans forward when I say, “I don’t know, but let’s find out.” Trust puts a hand on my back and whispers, “You can stand here without answers and still be worthy.”

Mary Oliver, in that tender benediction from Wild Geese, tells us, “You do not have to be good. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Whenever my shoulders tense with the old urge to perform certainty, I breathe and ask what the “soft animal” loves right now. Almost always, it loves the spaciousness of not‑knowing, the shimmering possibility that hides behind definite conclusions.

So, dear reader, a few questions, gentle but direct, the way a good friend might nudge your elbow over coffee:

Where in your life do you still wear the armor of certainty, even though it leaves you aching at the end of the day?

Whose fragile peace are you trying to hold together by having all the answers—your colleagues’, your family’s, or the child you once were?

What would become possible if you let “I don’t know” be an opening instead of a verdict?

Notice what happens in your body as you ask. A tightening? A little spark of relief? Gabor Maté reminds us that “healing begins with not having to hide any part of ourselves.” Sometimes the part in hiding is simply the one who isn’t sure.

These days, when a student, client, or friend turns to me with a question that outpaces my knowledge, I smile. I feel the ghost‑tug of that old panic, and then I let it pass. “I don’t know,” I say, “but let’s explore.” Every time I utter those words, I hear the click of a lock I didn’t realize was still fastened, and a door swings wider inside me. Somatically, my cells relax, and don't rush into formation prepared to win the spelling bee.

Here’s the quiet miracle: the world doesn’t collapse when we admit uncertainty. More often, it leans in. Creativity perks up, collaboration grows roots, and the room fills with breathable air. Within that air floats the permission Mary Oliver gave us, to belong to ourselves and each other without the performance of perfection.

I used to believe I needed the right answers to be enough. Now I know enoughness lives in the courage to stand inside the questions. The volcano of doubt still rumbles, but its smoke no longer blinds me; it rises like incense, a reminder of the holy ground where fear, curiosity, and trust meet.

So if you’re exhausted from lugging the myth of omniscience up the mountain of your days, consider laying it down. Try letting the next “I don’t know” cross your lips with a hint of wonder. Feel how your shoulders drop, how your breath deepens, how the child inside loosens her white‑knuckled grip and looks around at a world suddenly alive with possibility.

In that moment, you may discover what I did: not knowing isn’t a failure of intellect . . . it’s an invitation to freedom, acceptance, and the bright, buoyant lightness of being."

written by B. Littleton, June 2nd, 2025

photo from Nature Journal, 2016.

Photographer not cited.