Speak with less certainty.
Be less confident in what you know.
Claim not to possess knowledge, but the ability to learn.
What if that is where the real security lies?
Growing up, we were thought that high levels of confidence and certainty are the right manner of carrying oneself through life. The image of our ideal was a person with firm beliefs and life direction that no external factors, or even time, can change.
A young mind then steps into the world carrying the conclusion that certainty of one’s initial beliefs and loyalty to where one is going means security and mastery of life.
Yet, both individual and collective history show that this is not a peak of embodied human potential, or a road towards safety, but a point from which development and security begin to decline.
An Anchor
We indeed need an anchor – an idea of what our life is about, a value that determines the direction of our life, a self-concept. But the rigidity of perception is not an anchor – it’s an inhibition for the expansion of an individual’s potential.
Think of any conflict where one side refused to listen to the other, and how distant the resolution was.
Think of any internal conflict, when you cling to one angle of the story, and how oblivious you become to a solution that lies within the reach of a hand.
When you claim to know, you stop seeking to learn.
A point from which growth occurs isn’t certainty, but awareness.
Certainty and confidence feel so good because they fleetingly calm the nervous system of an anxious, directionless mind. They offer reassurance in the place where awareness was meant to stand.
Awareness doesn’t tie itself to identity, beliefs, and emotions, as certainty does. It stands on its own, present and lucid, fully receptive to impulses that come from all sides. It is rooted not in what one thinks is known or believes should be, but in discernment based on deep internal resonance.
Awareness takes the complexity of your uniqueness, aligns it with wider dimensions of existence, and offers you a hand to take the next step.
Infinity
Certainty is seductive; it implies something definite. It knows, therefore, it provides a sense of stability and security. Awareness, on the other hand, keeps your eyes open, implying that whatever you know could at any point be proven questionable or irrelevant.
Knowledge needs transparency, an opening to arrive. The bridges that transport it are curiosity and a defenseless ego.
These two speak the language of infinity. They look out into the far distance, stretching the scope of your vision as wide as possible, seeking not what is confined, but what breathes and moves; what remains true despite many changes of season.
Fluidity
While certainty lives within the strict lines, truth is fluid and looks different from every slight change in angle. It only takes the same form when perceived from a far enough distance. Each person needs a slightly different kind of love, but everyone needs love.
A close-up perspective reveals the nuance of a big picture. Certainty latches onto a single degree and ignores the full circle–the context that offers meaning and an insight into the complexity that hides behind everything. Awareness, on the other hand, is responsive to minor differences, while conversing with the picture that holds everything together.
Transparency
Truth isn’t about knowledge that lives in closed off, sealed space, where all is defined and known. For it to be real, it needs transparent membranes, a skin thick enough to filter common daily toxins, but soft enough to allow permeability of new impulses and information.
Beliefs, values, concepts, and ideas become valid when they are challenged and questioned. They need to live in the same space with all weaker versions of it, where they can collide and bounce off each other, giving contrast, texture, and depth to one another.
Pressure
We believe that being certain will keep us safe: the more rigidly you can claim to know what you’re doing and the more strict you build the walls of your reality – the closer you are to conquesting and winning life.
But rigidly defined walls also mean stagnant existence. Stagnancy leads to pressure buildup. Pressure to know, to achieve, to conquer. Instead of moving with life and allowing it to flow through you, you bend and twist every new impulse into something you believe it should be.
All things change, progress, evolve, and respond to life. Anchoring yourself in a single learned belief doesn’t make you a winner of the game, but a last row spectator in an arena, reduced to no more than performing a reaction to a move someone else played.
Release
As soon as you open up your mind to the idea that you know very little – almost nothing – that there are things bigger than you and your limited mind, which believes it understands life, it doesn’t get harder – it gets easier. The pressure to know and conquer drops, eyes soften, and open up. Now curiosity arrives, you want to discover, to learn, to surrender, and play.
It hits you like a wave of release overtaking your body, a visceral sensation of remembering something that cells of your body understand well – that you were never meant to know, but to experience. Not some of it, but all of it. Not moderately, but fully. Not to appear right, but to remain alive.
Suddenly, life feels less like a script of rigid rules and definitions, and more like a game of collecting clues with every step taken, building a puzzle that fits not someone else’s answers, but creates your own questions, and turns your life into a beautiful, unique expression.
The Unknown
Certainty and blind, stubborn confidence aren’t our backbone – the unknown is.
It’s not about the pages you’ve read, but the ones your eyes still haven’t grazed. It’s not about being at the wrong place, but about being fixed on the stories that take you nowhere. It’s not about knowing what your life is about, but about discovering what it could become.
The anchor, the peak, the pillar is
I do not know, but I would like to learn, discover, and, perhaps, one day, know.
