#76

During one summer BBQ, a rare one when the weather cooperated, my mother sat in our garden and asked a simple question about what was under a big tarpaulin on our deck. Neither Shawn or I were there to answer her. Later on, I heard that my sister and her husband had confidently and quickly given her a response.

The wrong response. They were wrong.

But they answered with confidence and my mother took their word and life moved on.

My mother relayed this story to me - and I was able to correct the answer, which she then admitted sounded much more like what she was expecting to hear.

At the time, no one got up and looked under the tarp. My mother did not question the response.

No one said, ‘I don’t know’.

It appears that knowing and answering was ranked above not knowing and discovering.

To be frank, this teeny tiny occurrence in a summer of delightful family moments has rarked me up. I really wish people would engage more honesty and let ‘I don’t know’ trip off their tongue without restraint.

In my least charitable moments, I have muttered dark and scathing things about ‘arrogant, effin teachers’, proposed that ‘false confidence kills you know!’ and been dumbfounded by the lack of practical under-tarp scrutiny that went on.

On the lighter side, it’s such a missed opportunity to not practice ‘I don’t know’ more often. Here’s why I think ‘I don’t know’ is a muscle worth flexing:

it keeps the conversation alive and open. You can follow up ‘I don’t know’ with any number of cool sentence closers like, ‘shall we find out together?’, ‘where could we find the answer?’ or ‘that’s a fascinating question, I’ll think more about that!’.
it invites either humility or curiosity. Both are very valuable states of being. With humility, I can honestly say that I don’t know what it’s like to live in a motel instead of a permanent home. With curiosity, I can say that I don’t know how long it takes to defrost sperm, but we could probably find out on the internet (yes, answered that one this week)

Photo by Simone Pellegrini on Unsplash - ancient back muscles - very beautiful!

‘I don’t know’ is akin to the well trodden paths of embracing not knowing, grace, surrender and wonder. But it doesn’t need to be a spiritual pursuit or a meditation practice. Everyday parenting give a thousand opportunities to say ‘I don’t know’. Good listening in a conversation will usually give you a shot at it too.

If you’re digging the ‘I don’t know’ theme, check out this lovely poem, The Glorious Ignoramus by Nic Askew, shared via a blog post by Michael Neill also well worth reading slowly. I reckon the poem would be a good one to read with primary school aged kids. Might do that myself…

That is all for today. As always, I look forward to hearing what you heard, saw and felt when reading this.

With love,

Michelle xx

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I’ll try to get back into the chat this week and see what else you readers don’t know!

Friday Flow | Michelle Howie

Flexing my 'I don't know' muscle 💪