Practice Not Knowing

How to watch the world without losing your cool

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Recently I’ve been writing my book (latest title - Once Upon a Time: Liberating Ourselves from the Fairy Tales about Reality we Make Ourselves Believe) instead of Substack essays, but two things have called me back. First, the new developments in the Toronto political landscape, which has people checking in with me a little more often than usual. The second was a notification of a brand new subscriber - the first in a while. The encouragement I feel when I get new subscribers, as well as likes and comments is real - as much as I’d like for my ego to be immune to external validation, it still isn’t, and so it makes a difference in my motivation when I get feedback from the world.

The topic of this essay dovetails nicely with some of the underlying messages in my book. Overall, it is my experience so far that the world is really not what we think it is - or at least not what I thought it was. I’ve realized that the more I live in my mind and its beliefs about reality, the farther from actual reality I go. That means the easiest way to avoid leaving actual reality for fantasy is through the practice of not knowing.

Which brings me to the mayoral fracas. I find political scandals tiresome at the best of times, and in many ways the particulars of this one are even less newsworthy (though my idea of newsworthy and the media’s are completely different - so if you’re outside Toronto politics and don’t know the scoop just google Toronto mayor resignation to find it). The only reason it held my attention at all is because of the potential implications for the entire city of another election so soon on the heels of the last.

When I heard the news I immediately got swept up in anger, despair (despair is often at least a temporary go to for me when it comes to politics), frustration, and judgement - lots of judgement. Judgement of the mayor, of the media, of the voting public, of the non voting public, etc etc etc (and always some left over for myself as well).

But anytime I started to get to carried away by those judgements, I pulled myself out by grounding myself in reality - the breaths I was taking, the birds chirping in the sky, the trees swaying on the ground, the sound of sirens outside or the refrigerator in my house. And from that grounded place, I could remind myself that there are a lot of things I don’t know when it comes to Toronto politics right now, like:

I don’t know what the mayor’s motivations are/were,

I don’t know how the media makes decisions on its coverage.

I don’t know whether the city will be better off or worse off after this election.

I don’t know whether I would have been a better or worse leader.

I don’t know whether I should run again.

I don’t know who should and shouldn’t run for mayor.

The list of what I don’t know goes on and on. As soon as I try to answer any of the above questions with any degree of certainty, I go astray. And the degree to which I go astray is directly correlated with how I am feeling about myself and the world. When I feel good, what I think I know may be positive (eg the mayor is genuinely trying to do the best for his family and the city), but when I don’t feel good my answers are anything but. When I don’t feel good I see malice, manipulation, deceit, ulterior motives and future catastrophe. And if I’m too busy listening to - and believing - those negative judgements I miss the fact that I’m operating from a place of pain, not love.

Seeing the worst in people or situations - whether it’s the election or a disagreement with a family member - feels bad. And it leads me away from creative solutions and towards apathy or anger. So I find that the best thing for me when I finally do notice my judgements is to remind myself, I don’t know.

Most of what we think we know, we don’t. We don’t know how another person is, or what they are thinking. We don’t know what another person’s motivations are, or their desires. We don’t know the past, and we certainly don’t know the future.

As an experiment, try to notice how often you say or think something that you actually don’t know. Anytime you say “She thinks x”, notice you are saying something that is likely to be untrue - are you inside her brain? Same goes for anytime we say “He is a y”, or that “thing z is going to happen”. How could you possibly know what someone else is? And how can you know the future? Most of what we say or think, we actually don’t know. Of course, it could just be me that doesn’t know - maybe you do - I won’t presume you don’t as that would be me thinking I know something about your internal knowledge.

What I do observe is that practicing not knowing brings me peace, and it also brings me back to myself. If I’m busy thinking I know the future, or what’s in someone else’s mind, I prevent myself from seeing what’s actually there. When I practice not knowing, I can come back to myself and what I do know - which is very little.

It surprises me when I realize how often I assume I know things. I have started noticing and now I can’t stop - which is frustrating when I want to have a good vent about my opinions. When I start to rant and rave a little voice now pipes up and says “Really Sarah? Are you sure about that?”, which eventually forces me to get off my soapbox and back to a more humble place. But that humble place of not knowing is so much more peaceful and open than the alternative. I highly recommend the practice, and what I’m hoping for is the day that I’ll finally remember every time I react to something or someone - before I get into land of certainty and judgement - that I just don’t know. Of course I don’t know when or if that day will come, but I’m enjoying the journey towards it.