I don't have a clue

In fact, none of us do.

I have a confession to make.

If I come across as confident or enlightened when you read this newsletter, it’s because I’m serving you a highly-curated snippet of my mind that I’ve laboured over to rid of all ambiguities.

I’m neither confident nor enlightened. In fact, I’m often a mess.

I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the world. I’m not well-versed in human psychology. I’m full of biases and prejudices. I often contradict myself. I don’t hold the secret to a better life. Most of the time I don’t even know myself.

In short, I have no clue. I’m just making it up as I go along.

And the truth of it is: you are too.

We have no clue

There is frighteningly little that can be known about life.

We cannot know what the future holds, if we’re going to slip and fall in the shower this morning, if a colleague will dump a mammoth project onto our plate this afternoon, if we’re going to win the next lottery we buy, if a tsunami will destroy our beloved beach destination before our next holiday.

We cannot know how to reach our goals, make our wildest dreams come true. We may have ideas. We may have plans. But there is no knowing which of them—if any—will get us across the finish line.

We cannot know what’s responsible for our successes. Was it the all-nighters? That person we started chatting to at the café who happened to be friends with the right people? The alignment of stars? Any event is shaped by countless forces—most of which we’re not even aware of—and so trying to determine the root cause of anything is an exercise more futile than fruitful.

We cannot know what someone is thinking or feeling unless they tell us, and even then the veracity of their account can never be verified. Most of the time, unless we’re exceptionally attuned to our thoughts and feelings, we don’t even know what’s on our own mind.

The scale of our ignorance is vast, so vast it’s difficult to grasp. We think we know what we’re doing when we’re really just tumbling through life blindfolded.

We don’t have a clue.

What to do?

Our forced ignorance, frightening though it is, can be incredibly liberating. If only you choose to draw the same conclusion I do.

Instead of getting distressed by the vast unknowns—the future, the secret to success, the minds of others, the mysteries of life—I encourage you to be emboldened by the fact that despite not knowing, life goes on.

We don’t need to know the future in order to wake up every morning and go about our daily routine. We don’t need to know the secret to success in order to do good work and feel a sense of accomplishment when we go to bed each night. We don’t need to know the minds of others in order to have meaningful connections. We don’t need to know any of it in order to live.

Here’s the beauty of life—that it happens despite us having no clue.

There is no secret to life that unlocks eternal happiness. There are only flawed recollections, imperfect understanding, invented hypotheses, and limitless trials and errors.

Knowing isn’t where life happens—it’s doing. It doesn’t matter that you have no idea whether you’ll get that job you applied for, whether your friend will cancel dinner yet again, whether your partner will still love you in ten years, whether you’ll die tomorrow. What matters is that you open your eyes in the morning, get up from bed, and get on with your day.

No one has a clue, and yet we’re here—me writing this sentence, you reading my words; both thinking, breathing, living.

What do you think?

A bit of a strange question, but I’m curious:

What do you not know in life?

Beyond the future, the path to success, the minds of others, the key to happiness—what else can’t we know in life? Please hit “reply” or leave a comment—I read every response and I’d love to hear from you. If you want, share this with someone you do know.

Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,

Val

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Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash