GO before you KNOW: The weirdly useful power of not knowing what’s next
Adulthood is apparently one long oral exam where somebody forgot to give us the study guide. What’s your five-year plan? Where is this relationship going? What’s the strategy? What’s next? And heaven forbid your answer is the three words we’ve somehow decided competent adults should never say: “I don’t know.” But after three wildly different conversations this month, I’m starting to think “I don’t know” needs a rebrand. Elena Carpino explored what happens when an old identity no longer fits, but the new one hasn’t introduced itself yet. Rick Lozano showed how creativity actually works when you don’t know where the idea, song or experiment is going. And Scott Bloom? He wrote an entire book that depended on Scott Bakula saying yes before Scott Bakula even knew anything about it. Different people. Different circumstances. Same fascinating pattern. They moved before they saw the whole path. In this month-end wrap-up, we’re looking at why our desperate hunt for certainty can keep us from doing SOMETHING, what happens when we stop demanding that Future Us provide a detailed itinerary, and why action may create the clarity we’ve been waiting around to receive. We’ll get into identity limbo, Rick’s idea of creating “in the absence of clarity,” Scott’s spectacularly unresolved Bakula gamble, my own basement-era “Who the hell am I now?” moment, and one deceptively simple strategy for making those enormous life questions small enough to actually do something about. Maybe “I don’t know” isn’t a stop sign. Maybe it’s just the part of the map that hasn’t been drawn yet. And unfortunately, sitting on the porch yelling at the blank space doesn’t seem to draw it.
