Here’s a song I listened to while writing this:
I don’t do well with the unknown. I know most people don’t and that it has something to do with our lizard brains, but I feel that I fare especially unwell in this domain. My brain doesn’t know how to classify things that are in that in-between space, that evade classification altogether. I always want to know what something is or how it benefits or where I’m going, how I’m getting there, and how long I plan on being there.1
I have a deep desire to qualify and quantify things, to identify the meaning or purpose of something (or someone) in my life, and then to file it neatly into a category based on their meaning. I can (and do) appreciate the transient and ephemeral. Intellectually, I understand that “change is the only constant”, that nothing is ever really stagnant, and that the in-between space—a place of rest and digestion, a place of pause, of “I don’t know”—can be a fertile, full-of-potential place. It’s there that healing and clarity happen (if you can let it happen), where possibility and dreams are birthed.
All of that is fine with me as long as I don’t linger in that annoying, uncomfortable middlespace between Point A and Point B. I just really want to get there.
My brain feels most comfortable in the black and white; it always has. I used to think it was because that’s just my personal preference, that I prefer things to be certain and defined and clear. Now I’m realizing with all this somatic and therapeutic work I’ve done that what it actually is is a response to traumas I’ve experienced in the past, instances where not-knowing had me feeling small, disempowered, isolated, and out of control.
I hate being out of control and that’s largely what being the domain of not-knowing involves. Not knowing is a hellish place that I will work tirelessly to avoid and when I end up there, I will contort my brain in all kinds of directions to figure out how I can know. Until I know, not-knowing feels like a puzzle that I must solve—I ask questions, I spin all the hypotheticals I can think of, I research. Doing all of this is my way of exerting some amount of control over the unknown so that I can get out of it as quickly as possible.
Knowing is protective. If I know, I can buffer against future heartbreak. I prevent hurt feelings and the shock of rejection. I can lessen the potential that I’m going to wind up looking stupid or feeling bad. If I know, I can be safe. I can do, I can act.
Not knowing is unsettling. When I don’t know, I feel vulnerable and the need to be hypervigilant. Not knowing makes me want to brace for unpredictability, that anything including every catastrophe my overactive brain can imagine, could happen. If I don’t know, I feel powerless. I am uncomfortable with the stillness that the not-knowing asks of me.
I hate it here.