I’ve Been Having a Really Hard Time Saying ‘I Don’t Know’
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Spirituality, Politics, Religion, Self, Lifestyle

Few things have made me realize how much I need Jesus as much as the present moment, with the whole world unraveling with confronting both a pandemic of epic proportions and systemic racism.

In these moments, I have felt like I needed to have all the answers, like I needed to argue against people who didn’t believe that systemic racism is real and argue with other people about masks, and be the expert and encyclopedia on the state of policing in America.

I remember the only time I felt a similar zeal to not just stand for justice, but prove how smart I was and get into all these political discussions and arguments with people: the months following the 2016 election. I try to avoid these conversations because I usually only leave them feeling angrier at the person I’m talking to or angry at myself for what I could have done better as an inner-city teacher to confront the problem, but none of it ever fixes the problem.

I realize that I always have to be right these days. I have an undying need to feel like I’m right and win these arguments or get into long-winded and comprehensive conversations about Trump, the state of the pandemic, and the history of policing in America, but I find myself tired and fatigued because it’s so exhausting to feel like you have to know everything.

And it’s impossible to know everything. No one ever does. I realize there are three words I haven’t said in a pretty long time: “I don’t know.”

I haven’t acknowledged what I don’t know or anything that I’m not the expert on in months now, maybe even a year. After all, I’m a teacher and I’m supposed to know my constant and stand strong on my views and opinions — my students don’t have to agree, but challenging them is going to make them better in their opinions.

But lately, maybe with a lockdown-induced personal panic and spending too much time on Twitter and reading the news, I haven’t acknowledged how much I didn’t know, and I don’t know a whole lot. I felt like I had to have the solutions to every world and big societal problem catching our nation’s attention, and I’m tired of feeling that way.

The truth is that I don’t know anything, and that the Socratic Paradox that Socrates was wise because he responded that “I know that I know nothing” pertains especially to me right now.

I used to scoff at headlines to not spend so much time on social media or reading the news because I saw it as a privilege not being able to read the news and be informed with everything going on right now. And yet I remembered how hard it was for my students to even log onto our online classrooms, get a computer, and how seven million school-aged children don’t have home Internet service.

So no — being informed, being able to be on social media and read the news all the time is a privilege — I was wrong. Those are also three words I realize I haven’t said in a while either — I was wrong.

Seriously, I’m not going to say to look inward and realize when you were wrong more often yourself. But I’m a person that prioritizes looking into the mirror and recognizing my own sinfulness as a Christian, I make mistakes, a lot of them, but I haven’t been able to recognize how wrong I’ve been for things that I’ve said or done in the past for a while now because I always need to feel like I’m right now.

I don’t know why I can’t say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong” any time in the past couple of months. Maybe as a teacher, I’ve internalized the message that I do need to know everything and be right about everything all the time — but why? Maybe it’s just the political climate of the day. Maybe it’s just being on lockdown during the pandemic and not being able to have the life I usually have — I don’t know, maybe it’s just all of these things.

For now, though, I seriously just want to reclaim the ability to say “I don’t know” about a lot of the things I feel like I have to be some sort of oracle for. No one is going to say after I launch into a rant about my opinions “oh crap, Ryan is right and he has the solution to save the world!”

My mother loves me, and even she won’t say that because it’s not possible, and I wonder if a combination of finishing up my first year as a teacher, having a worldwide quarantine, and the George Floyd protests have left me grasping for answers that I don’t have.

I like to think I’m a pretty good listener. I can listen to my friends’ problems and have them vent to me for hours on end. But lately, I don’t feel like I’m a very good listener — I interrupt more, I’m speaking and giving my opinion much more than I’m listening, and I’m not thinking of what another person is saying as much as I’m thinking about what I can say next.

So lately I haven’t been the listener, but just someone who needs to rant all the time about these serious issues, and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t feel passionate about it, but I’ve been nasty, bitter, and angry. Part of me was glad that people were starting to see a lot of the byproducts of systemic racism that my students face in school every day, another part of me was angry that after about three weeks of coverage, people seem to have moved onto trivial debates over their right to wear a mask.

The cynic inside of me feels like not much is really going to change, and I’ve just given more and more into that cynic.

For now, I want to just say “I don’t know.” I don’t know what the solutions to all the world’s problems are. I just don’t. I don’t know and I want to reclaim my previous ability in being comfortable with uncertainty because I have, of late, been so uncomfortable with it.

I have cast aside so much of my faith to God, so many of my values for the sake of the religion of me — me having all the answers, me being the person that’s always right, me being the person that is more advanced in my opinions than other people? And why am I focusing so much on people who, in my mind, are these ignorant other people when I have so much to work on myself?

For now, I want to recite the words of Jesus in Matthew 7 on the perils of judgment:

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye, when there is the log in your own eye?” — Matthew 7:3–4, ESV

I am not righteous. I am not holy. I am not the one who was sent to save the world — God is, and when I say “I don’t know,” it’s not a means of giving up the fight, but letting go to God as the one who will save, not myself. With the rage that was building up in my heart, the anger, and the self-righteousness, I needed to give myself up to God, who knows all the things I don’t.

So I don’t know all the answers. I don’t even have any answers. And I was wrong for internalizing that I was some sort of oracle or expert analyst — I’m just another flawed and ignorant human being in need of grace.