INTRODUCTION
Imagine that the person you are secretly in love with gives you a present. “Here it is,” they say with a smile on their face, as they hand you a large, oddly shaped box, carefully wrapped. You’re surprised and about to open it when they remark: “But you have to wait three days to open it.” “Three days?” you reply. What’s in it, you wonder? The box feels heavy, but with its odd shape it could be anything. You shake it gently, but there is no sound or clue to its contents. Could it be the statement of love you’ve been yearning for, or perhaps something more mundane? You don’t get much sleep that night. Your curiosity becomes insatiable and you feel you cannot wait another day – you want to know. Would you open the box before the three days were up?
When we want to know something, not knowing is tough. Most people’s natural reaction to not knowing is to shun it. Yet to be human is not to know. We naturally turn to those who promise answers: the experts, the leaders and those who appear to know. We hold on to the knowledge we already have, we are afraid to let it go. We are neurologically hard-wired to avoid the unexpected and prefer certainty. Situations that are ambiguous or uncertain can make us feel incompetent, embarrassed and ashamed.
Yet we live in a world of uncertainty, complexity and volatility. We are unable to define the most complex challenges we face, let alone solve them. When we reach the edge of our knowledge, our default responses include clinging to our existing knowledge, attempting quick-fix solutions, or avoiding the situation altogether.
This book is about the problems that arise from our usual approach to the unknown, and it proposes a more fruitful relationship with not knowing. At the edge between the known and the unknown there is a fertile place, full of possibility. Playing at the edge can lead us to experience fresh new learning, creativity, joy and wonder. The edge is the place where something new can emerge. We call this Not Knowing. When we talk about Not Knowing (capitalized as a proper noun – “ing”) we are suggesting a verb, a process, not a thing.
Books are traditionally vehicles for expertise and knowledge. As soon as we began work on this book, we were struck by the irony of writing about Not Knowing. How could we even imagine that we could write something knowledgeable about a topic that is, by its very nature, mysterious and unknown, even unknowable?
This book is not a “how-to” guide, and it does not provide easy answers either. Instead, it invites you to explore your own relationship with Not Knowing through the stories and experiences of others. The stories explore Not Knowing through a variety of lenses, such as art, science, literature, psychology, entrepreneurship, spirituality and the wisdom traditions. In researching this book we have curated a rich collection of diverse stories from all over the world. We meet people who have struggled with the unknown and, at the edge, discovered something that was not possible before, as well as people who are comfortable living and working at the edge.
A few of the stories are taken from history, but most are of recent or contemporary events, from people we have interviewed personally. We had the privilege of listening to their tales of Not Knowing, which were often shared with great honesty and vulnerability. With this in mind we have changed some names to respect anonymity. Although this book is primarily written for those in the world of work, we hope you can apply it to a range of situations in your personal and professional life. As authors, we have written this book with one collective voice, for clarity. Where we also share our own individual stories, we have highlighted this.
Our interest in writing about Not Knowing comes from our own experiences of being in the unknown. We both have a long history of fighting, resisting and, on many occasions, simply hating it.
Diana: I was born in Craiova, a town in the middle of rolling fields in the province of Oltenia in south-western Romania. My parents were respected artists – my father a stage and film actor and my mother a concert harpist. I remember a happy childhood overall, summers visiting the family farm and winters sledding down the hill near our house with my brother Stefan. Yet we lived with a constant uncertainty – that at any moment a neighbour could alert the secret police to a rebellious activity in thought or action.
With state-controlled media, it was common not to know about what was happening in the wider world. To fight the propaganda, my father would regularly listen to Radio Free Europe, which was broadcast from West Germany in defiance of communist censorship. Being caught listening to that crackly station meant interrogation by the secret police. The sounds of Radio Free Europe form a backdrop to my memories of childhood. I can still hear the main theme song in my head and the familiar murmur of voices.
I learned the day-to-day oppression of having knowledge denied and the power of knowing the truth.
I remember one balmy summer afternoon falling asleep at my grandmother’s house in the countryside, and waking up to the news. The journalist was accusing former Romanian President Ceausescu of murdering children. It was the story the whole world found out about with horror after the Revolution in 1987. Children were being kept like animals in orphanages without the basic necessities and adequate love and support.
I was only 12 years old and I still remember the shock of hearing that story. Not just the horrific details, but also the fact that I was now privy to secret knowledge that might place my family in danger.
In 1987 my father said “enough is enough” and we escaped Romania to Austria. That period in Austria was a time of utter Not Knowing – where we would live, what would happen to us, how it would all turn out. One year later we moved to Australia, where we were granted permanent residency as refugees. Another transition, another stage of Not Knowing - living in a new culture, learning a new language, starting a new school... From a childhood in a land of manipulated truth, to a time of uncertainty and change, I have lived and wrestled with Not Knowing.
Steven: In 2000 I was struggling to get out of bed and was losing weight, with a dry cough and pain in my lungs. As a stoical and stubborn man, I brushed off the symptoms until they became so painful that one morning I could not even tie my shoelaces. When I finally decided to go to the doctor, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which was drug-resistant and I was immediately sent to hospital. It meant an operation, many months of taking strong antibiotics and, at one point, as my condition was failing to respond I did not know if I was going to get well again.
I bought my first home in London at the height of the property market in 2006, just before the financial crash. Being cautious, I did a full survey before making the purchase and yet when I was just about to sell it I received a letter from the council saying that the render, windows, boundary fence and extension were all illegal. The previous owner had not acquired the necessary planning permissions and my solicitor had not picked this up. I was given a 30-day notice to remove the extension, which contained the only
toilet, kitchen and bathroom in the small cottage – so this would mean literally knocking down half the house. I appealed, but lived for over a year not knowing if I would have a home to come home to.
At that time I worked in an investment bank - feeling secure and enjoying my job. One morning I got a call from a colleague saying that the name of our firm had changed. Overnight we had been bought out, to save the firm from financial collapse - a danger we knew nothing about, even the evening before. Projects were put on hold and every day we would see new emails wishing people well in their new endeavours as they were made redundant. After six months of constant uncertainty I was called into my manager’s office with an HR representative and was made redundant in a phone call. Even though I was expecting it, it did not make it any easier and I was uncertain about what the future now held professionally and how I was going to pay my mortgage.
In life choices I always seemed to be in a bind about making important decisions. Should I take this option or should I take the other? When thinking about most decisions about the future and how to respond, I would paralyse myself, vacillating between options that became constant dilemmas in my mind. A friend said to me, “Steven, you seem to embody hard decisions.” It was painful and I hated the tyranny of choice and of not knowing what to do. I joked with them that I had a PhD in uncertainty! Life for me has been a constant struggle with Not Knowing, not only the more dramatic events I have described above, but the everyday choices I had to make. I only knew that there had to be a better way of being with the unknown.”
Like you, we came to this book struggling with the unknown. The journey of researching and writing has helped us to develop a fresh relationship with Not Knowing. We are less eager to rely on our existing knowledge, more sceptical about those who proclaim certainty, and more comfortable with being in a state of Not Knowing. We hope that you will experience this too.
At the end of the book we offer questions for reflection and experiments to play with to support you in developing your inquiry further.
As you commence your journey in this book, we invite you to bring along an exploratory mindset and to be open to the twists, turns and discoveries that you may make along the way. As the Spanish writer Antonio Machado said: “Traveller, there is no path, the path is made by walking.”