Unknown Unknowns

A little while ago, I read an article in The New York Times called The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is. An anosognosic is someone who has a disability, but who is unaware of or denies the existence of the disability, typically a physical one, like paralysis or a missing limb. The article expands on that thought and discusses the idea that there are things that we know, things that we don’t know, things that we know we don’t know and things that we don’t know we don’t know. Stop and digest.

Typically we would probably think of the things we know as being what makes up our lives and who we are. It’s amazing though, to stop and consider how much of an effect the things that we don’t even know that we don’t know have on our lives. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life. And unknown unknowns constitute a grand swath of everybody’s field of ignorance.

At this point, it’s fairly easy to stop and consider how ignorant other people are. How people are clueless about the things that they do that annoy others. It’s trickier though, to stop and think about all the things I don’t know, partly because sometimes I just don’t know what I don’t know.

Take, for example, the very tricky art of attaining happiness and contentment in life. When I was in middle school, I was not very happy. Weird, I know. Part of my discontent came from feeling like I didn’t fit in anywhere, particularly with other guys. Again, very strange for middle school. I thought it was simply because I wasn’t very gifted athletically. I thought all I’d have to do was learn how to play sports enough to be able to bond with other guys and all my problems would be solved. I think that’s why it was so easy for me to latch onto reparative therapy when it was introduced to me. Only problem was I didn’t have the competitive drive that the other guys did when it came to competitive sports and so it was easier to just avoid it.

After my mission, when I started to own the fact that I was attracted to other guys and not to girls, the issue became my homosexuality (or my SSA as I referred to it then). THAT’s what was preventing me from being happy. It was kind of easy to blame everything on the gay. It makes for a nice scapegoat. All I needed to do was eradicate that from myself in order to be happy. Simple enough.

Now I’m to the point that I realize that part of true happiness and contentment lies in loving and accepting myself as I am and constantly striving to learn and grow and helping others do the same. I can look back and see how my limited understanding of things led to my clumsy search for happiness. My unknown unknowns prevented me from being content with myself. In all of this, I’ve learned that it’s never the issue; it’s how I hold the issue. Even if I encounter an issue that I’m able to resolve, other issues will arise and many will probably be issues that I can’t really do anything about. That’s why it’s never the issue, but how I hold the issue. How I choose to exist with it. Do I resent it or do I soak in it and listen to what it tells me?

Then I stop and think about all the things that I still don’t know that I don’t know. And I smile.