Three words.
I don’t know.
So easy to say, and yet so hard. I’ve noticed it lately—how quickly we fill silence with certainty, how almost every conversation turns into a contest where the person who sounds most convinced wins. We have opinions about everything: the economy, healthcare, schools, the neighbours, the world. Rarely do we spend as long thinking about the answer as we do about the question.
I’m not immune to it myself. I’ve sat in discussions and felt something tighten inside me when I wasn’t quite sure—and then filled the gap with a phrase that sounded wiser than it was. It’s human. But I think each of us pays a price for it.
Because when we don’t dare to acknowledge uncertainty, we stop listening. Why would I listen to you if I’ve already made up my mind? Conversation becomes one-way communication dressed up as politeness. And society, which is really just all of us together, becomes a harsher, narrower place for all of us to live in.
There is strength in saying: I don’t actually know, but I want to understand. It isn’t giving up. It’s leaving the door open just a little wider. I’ve changed my mind about important questions over the years, not because anyone put me down, but because someone patiently stayed and told me their story. People who didn’t need to be right. They taught me something I still carry with me: that it’s okay to think out loud, to be on your way, not to have arrived yet.
We mustn’t forget that changing your mind is learning, not losing. Not knowing is often the first step towards knowing something true.
So today I’m trying to practise that. Saying “I don’t know” when I don’t know. Staying with the question a little longer, instead of rushing towards an answer I don’t really own. And every time I manage it, it doesn’t feel like defeat. It feels as though the air becomes a little easier to breathe.
Maybe that’s the most honest thought I can carry with me today: it isn’t certain answers that make us wise, but the willingness to keep wondering.
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