The Stories We Tell

The Wisdom of Not Knowing

The mind loves to make up stories about the world, and these stories can sometimes get us into trouble. The mind can take a teeny shred of information - a two-second glance from a colleague, for example, that looks a tad bit menacing - and create a dramatic narrative that has almost no basis in fact. The mind concludes from that glance that you are about to lose your job, for example, when actually your colleague just heard that his partner's medical tests looked worrisome and he is sick with angst about the health of his beloved.

Once we key into this often inaccurate tendency of the mind, we discover that this happens not just once or twice in a day, but hundreds of times. We tell stories about strangers we pass in the street, we fantasize about what we could say to that bully in the car ahead of us, we dream of what we'll do with money we don't have, or we conclude from a single insensitive comment that our marriage will not survive the year.

I am a writer by vocation, and I love stories. I enjoy looking for connections between seemingly random events. I love connecting the dots with a narrative that makes sense. I confess that I have a soft spot for a good story and deep appreciation of skilled storytellers. I am not suggesting that stories are inherently bad, or that we stop telling stories about the world to ourselves and others.

I am suggesting, though, that we appreciate the incredible degree to which most of the stories we tell about our lives are fiction rather than fact. I am suggesting that our lives will be far happier when we finally see clearly how much of our spinning and storytelling is not particularly accurate and often counterproductive. It's a good idea when we visit the library to know whether we are wandering in the fiction or non-fiction section, after all.

Why do we do this to ourselves? The mind loves to figure things out. It wants to understand what’s going on. We’d like the to world fit into a clear and simple narrative that makes sense. We want this so much that sometimes cling to any sense of certainty - even if it is fictional - over the messy and complicated truths of life.

The alternative - not being certain about things - is harder to comprehend. It's not easy to live in a world where we can't quite make sense of why someone acted as they did, or what that pain in our shoulder really means, or what our children’s future might hold. We just want to know what’s going on!

But being a little less sure is an incredibly honest and authentic way to live a life. When you look life directly in the face, you see that life is in a perpetual state of flux. Nothing stays the same for long. There is not as much solid ground beneath us as we like to think. As the Buddha taught, impermanence is a fundamental truth of life.

This acknowledgement of life’s ever-changing flow requires us to develop a new way of living in the world, one that invites us to relinquish our tight hold on stories and opinions. We are asked to live without desperate grasping, even when we're not quite sure whether we are falling fast or flying high.

The Romantic poet John Keats described this state as "negative capability," or being "capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Can you imagine how it might feel to possess such negative capability, to not be sure and yet to be at peace with that not-knowing?

Try it. Think of something you've been struggling with: a career decision, family frustrations, the state of the world, anything. What do you really know for sure about what may be stressing you? What stories have you created to help make sense of your struggle? How are these stories impacting your well-being? And how many of these projected stories can you be certain are fact instead of fiction?

What would happen if you chose to live in a state of open-hearted uncertainty instead of catastrophic angst? What if you reeled your mind back to the present moment to what you know for sure ("I feel sharp pressure in my knee") instead of soaring farther and farther out into the distant reaches of the fictional cosmos? ("I never should have taken up running when I was 16, because that's surely when this started. And now I'll need a knee-replacement or a wheelchair before I'm sixty. I'll never travel again. Of course that won't matter if they botch the surgery and leave me dead on the operating table.")

Letting go of the need to figure everything out requires a giant leap of faith. It is an act of courage and wisdom. It is an acknowledgement that we live in a fragile and uncertain world. And it requires confidence that even amid the life’s fragility and impermanence, we have the wisdom and strength to manage whatever happens with steadiness and skill.

So how do we get from here, with our imagined certainties and stories, to there, toward living in the mystery without having to be sure? We could start with the simple act of paying attention. We might notice where the mind goes when it leaves the present moment. Does it take the tiniest shred of information (a siren blaring, for example, or a newspaper article) and use it to spin a story?

And when it spins out, where does the mind tend to go? Behind the door in the brain marked "Fantasy," where the people who know just what they'll do when they win the lottery go? Or perhaps into the room of "Worry and Angst," where all information can be turned into bad news, and a single sneeze can be a death sentence?  Or maybe the lounge of "The Other Shoe," where we craft stories about just what tragedy is about to befall us? Or perhaps the basement of "Blame" for those who like to get to the bottom of just whose fault every bump and bruise could be?

When watching our thoughts, we might notice how much time we spend spinning out into the future or hurtling back into the past, crafting stories all the while. We might also come to the startling realization that the brain can be a mischief-maker, stirring up trouble in moments that could be filled with peace. The brain can get a little addicted to the melodrama, to being stirred up. It's spicy. It's noisy. It's exciting.

But it's not at all tranquil and clear. And so once we see these habits of the mind and the ways they often sabotage wellbeing, we have a choice about how to act. Once we see what storytellers we are, we can be more careful about which stories we choose to believe. We can learn to be a little more suspicious of our certainties and melodramas, and perhaps a little more willing to live in the uncertain peace of the present moment.

Beautiful magic happens when learn to stay anchored in the here-and-now with openness and faith. The brain downshifts into a calmer and clearer space. The nervous system settles in ways that allow us to see more clearly the truth of what is. We sense that perhaps we don't always need to explain and understand every last sensation we meet. The brain stops reeling, and settles into the true facts of life - even if  all it knows for sure is that the sky is blue and the furnace is clanging and we are breathing in and breathing out.

What a relief! We don't have to figure everything out. We don't have to pretend we understand how we got here or what will become of life in the years ahead. We no longer need to over-simplify the complex truths of life, because we are capable of living with ease and skill amid the world’s many complicated mysteries.

We keep our gaze in the present moment, the only place life can be lived. We commit ourselves to wakefulness and love, right here and right now. And we live with faith that - even amid life’s many ups and downs - the future will be filled with far more potent and promising gifts than any imagined story could ever foretell.