Starting with knowing

What happens when somebody asks you if you know something? Do you say something or I do not know?

Think for a moment of all the variety of questions that might come to you about what you know. It is not just whether you know fact, information, data, verifiable evidence. Knowing is more than knowing information. Others in your life want to know what you know. But before they can actually know what you know, they have to wait for you to figure that out yourself. You need to know what you know. Before you actually know what you know, you also need to know what you don't know.

It's a conundrum because our world is forever seeking the exact verifiable answer from a single source that says ‘this is it’. But that is not going to be what everybody knows. When you stray from fact of the observable kind to more of an opinion or an experience, then the knowing becomes increasingly subjective based on who you are, your background, experience and perspective.

For example, if you are in a group and someone were to ask the question, what is this item? Let's say someone picks up a cup. The cup is of a particular shape. Suppose 10 people in that group were asked the question, what is this thing? It is likely that those 10 people would not all say the same answer. Some might say coffee mug, others might say tea cup, some might say cup just on its own or even container. The first knowing would be a language difference based on a person's experience. So already our knowing varies about something that we think should be so easy, right?

What if it is simpler and you are offered in one hand a cup with water and in the other a cup with another liquid. You are then to identify which cup has water in it. You might look at the cup and say, well, it's the one with, the clear liquid. How do you know? Have you tested it? Have you verified that your choice is actually water? Or is it something else? You see the knowing is still not a hundred percent, is it?

Let's pick another example. You are in the kitchen and you have a box of vegetables and someone wants to make soup. And they say to you, can you please get the potatoes out of the box because I want to make potato soup. You go to the box and in that box are all kinds of what you think are potatoes. There could be a different coloured type of potato. There's not just one type of potato. So the answer to that question, isn't easy. Is it? It's not simple to say, yes, I'll grab the potatoes from the box. You have to clarify. You have to say, well, which potatoes would you like from the box for this soup?

The point here is, that there is a difficult path to get to an absolute knowing. There is often opportunity for misinterpretation, personal subjectivity and disagreement. This possibility is greater when the knowing is exchanged between two people or more. You are offering your knowing. Others are offering theirs. You are exchanging knowing. This exchange is in the world that we live in.

What this interplay might do is push you back into yourself and ask a question: ‘Well, if there are differences of knowing outside of me, could that be possibly true inside of me? Are there differences of knowing within me? What is it that I know?”

The deeper question is ‘what is it I don't know?’. It is getting to a place of acceptance to start in our life to say, well, actually I don't know what, I don't know. That's the very essence of it all. I have some knowledge and I have some acquired knowledge and I have some sense of insight within me. But there are still a lot of questions that I have not answered or even asked. So we can go back and back and back until we get to this, how do you know what you don't know?

And that is the question I want us to start thinking about now. I want to invite you down this path of really understanding you and others from a point of view of knowing what you don't know to start the journey.

Why would you want to do this? Well, there are many reasons why. First of all, because accepting that we don't know everything means that we're open to possibility of growth, change adventure. Our curiosity can guide us and lead us into new directions that might take us somewhere interesting and exciting. It opens us up to exchange with others who may know things that we don't know that are different than us. There's a lot in this, in this not knowing. And to get to a place of asking the right questions you have to actually know what you don't know, so that you can ask the questions to get to a place of actually knowing.

You could turn this around and say, ‘what is it you want to know that you don't know?’ And the first question is not going to be, oh, ‘I'd like to know the periodic table of elements so I'm going to go learn the periodic table of elements’. Or’ I don't know how to speak another language so I'm going to go learn that other language.’ It's not about acquiring and updating your data bank of information in your brain. This is not what this point of view is about. This is very different. This is a sense of who you are as a person and how you are in this world.

And the reason why this also is very important is because who we are and how we are in the world changes throughout our whole entire life. So this question becomes an iterative, ongoing examination of ourself that we recycle, that we go around and look at and ask and think and refine. It is because of this enquiry that we are able to bring richness into our life, develop clarity of who we are, be more authentic, stay grounded and better connect with other people.

Wouldn't it also be exciting to engage in a world where you are part of another person's search and likewise, they are part of your search and that in this exchange and in this world of knowing what you don't know, you get to find others who may know. It's a learning journey, but it's also an experience journey. And it's an awakening journey. It is an insight explosion.

NOTE: This post is part of an exploration, series and offering of support around knowing what you do not know so you can know. More exploration can be found in the podcast. Additional support for one on one enquiry is available through Mentoring with Jenn.