“If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Who am I?
Why am I waiting for an answer to this question? Do I really think that a few gutteral sounds from my throat could ever sum up my existence precisely enough to commmunicate to another (or to myself) exactly who I am.
And yet it bothers me. I have so many concepts by which I define myself, some functional, many dysfunctional. Some of them I like, even the dysfunctional ones. Many of them I do not.
One of my favourite dysfunctional ones is that I need to "know" things. So much so that I get annoyed if someone asks me a question and I don't know the answer, or asks me to do something and I cannot. I have been accused of being competitive, but I don't think I really am. It just appears that way when I get annoyed or frustrated by inability or lack of knowledge.
This is one big area for my work - accepting the status of being the one that does not know, the one that is not at the front of the pack. Accepting my imperfect self as flawless imperfection. Why is it so hard for me to say, "I don't know!"???
I really don't think that anyone cares much if I don't have all the answers, which is a ludicrous thing to think anwyay. I think I need to practice saying, "I don't know."
And say it as if I mean it. Because I don't know. I really don't.
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2 comments:
I used to have a real paranoia about not knowing stuff - whatever it was, I always felt I should know about it. But I lost a lot of that after working for a boss who would quite confidently ask about anything he didn't know. As I respected him so much, it made it easier to be much more open myself. It felt so much better to be straightforward about everything. But it needed his example for me to drop my insecurity and be able to embrace "I don't know" as a strength. Guess that's what gurus are for sometimes?!
I wonder if perhaps "I don't know" should be come my mantra :-)
Maybe if I seek out situations where I cannot possibly know and get used ot my not-knowing it will help. Thanks for sharing Colin.
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