greetings, greetings to you, dear reader.
i’ve been thinking a lot about the answer “i don’t know” recently.
in attachment theory, the answer “i don’t know” (at least when it comes to interpersonal relationships and conflict) can signal a specific attachment style. ultimately, it points to a lack of feeling safe, of not feeling like you can be vulnerable in the moment with the question being asked of you. and growing up, often my answer was “i don’t know.”
i’ve spent a lot of my life in therapy to work through the “i don’t know”s. to feel safe in my physical body and physical space. to give my body and mind and soul a safe place to land every day. to transmute the feelings of loneliness and chaos into feelings of love and stillness.
and therapy itself became a weekly ritual i show up to that helps me find myself when the waves are back, that helps me stay grounded in who i am amidst change. it also helps that i have a fantastic therapist.
the most recent and radical shift, though, came after i read pleasure activism by adrienne maree brown, in which they talk about how those who have experienced trauma in their lives sometimes need additional support and resources to figure out how to navigate their life in a physical body. (this was me!)
because for as much as i could talk about the trauma, learn about the words for feelings and use them, i still was activated into fight, flight, or freeze mode. i didn’t have a sense of my body. i didn’t actually *feel* how i was feeling. i took the data and facts of the conversations and extrapolated them into feeling words. but i couldn’t feel anything in my gut. i couldn’t feel the physical sensations that come with being a person in the world, because i had learned long ago that it wasn’t safe to feel that way.
enter my brilliant somatics practitioner, gena. i started working with her a year and a half ago. and the work we’ve done together has changed. my. life.
so much of how i learned to live without control came from the work that she and i did (and do) together. and many of my references to the unknown and to control have to do with how i learned about choices and boundaries and groundedness from her.
but learning to live without control was never part of the plan. was never part of my plan.
the truth is there’s no other option than living with the unknown. we can seek to control various aspects of our lives and the lives around us to create a sense of knowledge, but the unknown is a fact of life.
can you think of a time in your life when you’ve felt one with the unknown? truly aligned with the sense inside that you, at the end of the day, know nothing? control nothing? when all you had were questions and no answers?
this isn’t meant to scare you, especially if your answer is ‘no.’
i recall a quote from daniel christian wahl in designing regenerative cultures, talking about what it means to think through living systems. in particular, in the first chapter of the book, he starts by challenging us, the reader, to think about what it means to live in community today.
wahl wrote:
our culture is obsessed with quick-fix solutions and immediate answers. time is at a premium and we don’t want to waste it dwelling on questions… questions, more than answers, are the pathway to collective wisdom. by living and loving the questions more deeply we can rediscover the beauty and abundance around us, find deep meaning in belonging to the universe, deep joy in nurturing relationships with all of life, and deep satisfaction in co-creating a thriving and healthier life for all. questions, more than answers are the pathway to collective wisdom. questions can spark culturally creative conversations that transform how we see ourselves and our relationship to the world. with this in mind, everything changes instantly.
everything does change instantly, when we learn to live with the questions without answers, with the unknown, without control. i had never felt closer to the unknown, the questions without answers than last year. when i put all of my earthly possessions in a storage unit (save for the few essentials packed into the camper) and went to consider all of the possibilities of life on this earth. to consider all of the options. to ask all of the questions.
and i now feel close to the unknown every day. i wake up and say to myself that the best possible answer to any question i have is: “i don’t know.” not a i-don’t-feel-safe-being-vulnerable “i don’t know,” but rather an anything-could-fucking-happen-today-and-good-god-all-i-can-hope-for-is-that-i-show-up-for-it “i don’t know.”
it’s liberating to not know, to not have to know. i can’t predict the great secrets of the universe. i can’t write them down in a planner or a calendar and schedule when my mid-life crisis happens (or, more honestly, my monthly existential crisis). i can’t predict when friendships will start or when they’ll end. i can’t predict when i’ll fall in love. i can’t put anything on a timeline or expect that i’m going to get it done by a certain moment in my life. because, at the end of every day, i do not know.
and that doesn’t mean that i don’t dream about the future and hope for the very fucking best. it doesn’t mean that i don’t have high standards for who and what shows up in my life. it just means that i’m open to being surprised every day of my life. i’m open to the universe unfolding in its own grand plan and living with the knowledge that ultimately, it’s beyond my control.
when we acknowledge that we live a life without control, that can come with the occasional response that we’re absolving ourselves of responsibility. not here, friend! for living with the knowledge that we don’t have control requires us to take care of our side of the street.
it requires us to show up as our full, authentic selves. to do the work to get there. and to recognize what’s ours and what’s not.
my feelings, my emotional well-being, my home, my space, my energy, my safety, what brings me joy — these are all on my side of the street.
people might try to take care of the things on our side of the street, but it is our responsibility to take care of our side of the street. and to acknowledge that it is often and always a two-way street.
granted, it’s easier for me to write this to you having come out of this vast period of transition in which i was smacked around by my former proclivity towards type-a life management until i threw my hands up and yelled at god: “ok! i get it, you asshole!”
but, thankfully for you, i have snippets out of my journal from my road trip writing explicitly about control and the unknown.
i wrote:
i feel that i’m entering into this adventure with a completely different framework to my life than ever before, and if i was going to leap into the unknown like never before, now would be the time to do it.
the challenge / test of the universe is, as usual, asking me to let go of control.
perhaps this lesson is truly that it’ll all work out: let go of control 2.0
there are so many things that are in my control, because i have CHOICE! and at the same time, there are so many things out of my control, because i am a mere human in this universe. it’ll all work out.
i have faith that it’s all going perfectly, but the faith is hard to maintain in moments when anxiety and the desire for control creep in. i guess that’s the test of faith: holding strong to it, maintaining it through the tests and trials and tribulations of each moment on this physical plane that we get to call life.
there are increasing waves of anxiety as i get closer to the date of departure. which i suppose can be considered completely normal but also there’s a sort of catch 22 with the level of control / “according to schedule” my old personality wanted to have and the “everything’s right on time” mentality i’m trying to embody at the moment. because if everything were under my control, the truth of the matter is that i’d be even more stressed and unhappy about a situation that, unfortunately is supposed to be a source of joy.
i’ve talked about how i have learned throughout this adventure to let go of control, to cede the illusion of control to the universe, to live with the knowledge that the best plan is no plan, to embody a center that revolves around reciprocity for my needs and others’ needs. and each time i get the wind knocked out of my windpipe, each time i am reminded of the people and places i come from, each time the universe pushes me to grow; i have learned that there is the fortune of finding the lesson amidst it all. of sitting in gratitude for the growth. of being able to find peace or hope or solace.
part of the question i have for myself is to the effect of “am i causing my own suffering on this?” am i overthinking this so much that each day is causing me pain? to some degree, certainly, the anxiety is easier to focus on than the fact that i don’t hold any control over the whims of the universe, which is another terrifying thought. if it were easy, if i could just do something about it all, if the choices were clear and concise with a neat pros and cons list for each, with a prepared list of future impacts, then that’d be the best case scenario. right?
one of the most incredible parts of this trip has been to see the night sky! the stars, the shooting star (!) or meteor as a part of the current ongoing meteor shower (perseid). it feels sacred, surreal, spiritual, a part of myself i didn’t know i was missing, a return to self and a reminder of the scales of the universe. so much is unseen and unknown and yet, my feet are planted on the ground and i am staring up at the universe and night sky and these things i know for sure and don’t know at all.
i really like the way that etel adnan writes about the ocean in her book shifting the silence. i imagine that her description of the ocean is not unlike our lives and how we know ourselves:
i lately learned a lot about the tides. the ocean is not just advancing and receding; it’s responding to rhythms within its rhythms, frequencies, symmetries, accelerations... it’s an organism with a complex and regulated system of breathing, with ways of life dwarfing those that govern us. the ocean is used, and misused, while it’s utterly unknown.
so to you, dear reader, i leave you with this:
may we all be challenged by goodness, by the spectacles of light amidst the chaos, by the unimaginable blessings that come with ceding control. may we all feel and live life as our full selves, as vulnerable and messy and loving and brilliant as it can possibly be.
onward,
sara
p.s. i went down a youtube rabbit hole this week, and i think you should too with: a concert for the sheep and a cow in love with the accordion.
Thank you, Sara, I thought of you when I came across this quote from Goethe: He who does not seek, finds. See you later. Cecele