The Continuous “I Don’t Know”

Not-knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First realize that you are sick;
then you can move toward health.

When they think that they know the answers,
people are difficult to guide.
When they know that they don’t know,
people can find their own way. -Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell translation)

“Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners – and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.”

This is why I value that little phrase “I don’t know” so highly. It’s small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself “I don’t know,” the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto.

Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself “I don’t know”, she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families, and would have ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying “I don’t know,” and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize.

Poets, if they’re genuine, must also keep repeating “I don’t know.” Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that’s absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their “oeuvre.” -Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, excerpt from her Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1996

“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.” -Socrates

“In the end is my beginning.” -T.S. Eliot, poem Four Quartets

“I Don’t Know” is brave, honest, vulnerable and empowering. Continuously say it.

At the Start (when you have no idea if it will work or how you will get through it): “I Don’t Know.”

During the Middle (regardless if you’re making progress or not): “I Don’t Know.”

In the End (after you’ve solved it or completed your project): “I Don’t Know.”

The continuous “I Don’t Know” allows you to always have beginner’s mind, and an open eye and heart. It keeps things fresh, thereby inspiring you for the next project, problem or artistic endeavor you wish to tackle.

P.S. – Hat tip to the always excellent Poetic Outlaws Substack for the Nobel speech by Wislawa Szymborska. You can read it in its entirety Here.

P.P.S. – Speaking of remarkable Polish women and the Nobel Prize…Marie Curie is the first woman to win a Nobel, the first person to win it twice, and the only person to win it for two different scientific fields. For a great Marginalian article on Marie Curie, click Here. And read the poem Power by Adrienne Rich here.