Transparency Item: The Perspectives section of the Graphic is comprised of articles based on opinion. This is the opinion and perspective of the writer.
I often try to convince myself that I know everything — I know who I am, how my life is supposed to play out, how I want certain plans I create in my head to come to life. I convince myself I have control.
The funny thing is that I don’t — it’s impossible to know everything. And that’s OK.
It feels good to have some kind of solid grip on things — whether it’s something small, like knowing what I’ll have for lunch in a few hours, or something bigger, like knowing what brings me joy. Having a handle on who I am or what my life looks like feels secure, comforting and effortless.
But life always finds a way to loosen that grip. The control I think I have starts slipping through my fingers, no matter how tight I hold on. It’s scary, uncomfortable and sometimes crushing.
The more I grow and the more I experience those times where my control is obsolete, the more I learn it’s OK not to know everything. In fact, it’s almost better.
Living without knowing is an inescapable piece of existence. Whether this is something that’s fortunate or unfortunate is dependent on how one decides to approach it. “Not knowing” might actually be the best place to live fully.
In my Foundations of Reasoning class I learned the term cognitive miserliness. It’s essentially the tendency of our brains to conserve mental energy by jumping to conclusions and clinging to easy answers for hard situations, according to American Phsycology Association.
I concluded I am pretty guilty of this tendency. I try to rationalize things to seem much simpler than they are — a coping mechanism to facing problems head on. I seek for any answer, even if it’s incomplete or false, rather than sitting with uncertainty.
My ego has always loved jumping to conclusions because it felt good to believe I had all the answers — even when deep down I knew I didn’t. This illusion of knowledge convinced me knowing everything meant having control.
But now I see constant certainty is actually a barrier to acceptance and growth. The unknown is where the real learning happens.
“Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you,” Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle wrote in his book “The Power of Now.”
I used to think everything in life was linear — each event had a reason and explicit explanation. The saying “everything happens for a reason” frustrated me because it felt like a way to gloss over uncertainty or discomfort in a situation rather than facing it.
How could someone say that when, in my mind, no reason could possibly justify why something has happened? Like why do bad things happen to good people?
Why do tragedies strike without warning, tearing through lives that didn’t deserve it? Why do we lose people before we’re ready to? Why do some things have to hurt so bad?
I used to think if I could just find the reason behind certain things — some logical explanation — I could be at peace with them. But maybe the whole point isn’t finding the reason but instead letting go of the need to find one.
Some things don’t automatically come with answers, and trying to force them can often deepen the pain. Sometimes there’s no other choice but to trust meaning will form in its own time — even if it feels like that time will never come.
I’ve noticed that when I stop forcing everything to make sense — when I stop demanding that every event have a clear purpose — I feel freer.
It’s not that I stop caring, or feeling things deeply, it’s more that I find comfort in the lack of control that I have on the outcome of things that I was really never meant to control. There’s a peace within trusting a process instead of controlling it.
I learned how to find excitement in surrendering. Surrendering to discomfort, finding peace in the unknown.
The more I attempt to control things, the more resistance I have toward the things I didn’t “plan” for. But oftentimes those things I didn’t plan for usually end up being the most meaningful parts of the journey.
In the wise words of famous musician John Lennon in his song “Beautiful Boy“, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Those meaningful moments that happen on the outliers of the plans in my imagination are the ones that change me the most.
They happen in those liminal spaces in between what I want to happen versus what actually happens. When I stop clinging to control and start trusting what’s meant for me, life opens up.
If I knew everything there’d be no room to grow, to question, to see the other side of things. There’d be nothing else to learn — no surprises, no turning points, no moments that stop me in my tracks and remind me how big life really is.
Maybe the point of life isn’t to figure it all out — it’s to simply just live it, even when it doesn’t make sense. To embrace the uncertainty, to find meaning without needing explanation and to trust that sometimes not knowing is the answer.
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Contact Eva Shauriki via email: eva.shauriki@pepperdine.edu
