Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm down at Exeter Quay so you might hear the occasional car or dog walker or walker go by and above me swooping of seagulls in a very grey sky.
I've actually walked through darkness to light.
I've not seen the sun rise,
It's too cloudy for that but there's a grayness in the air and still not quite fully daylight and down here on the quay is super quiet.
Nothing is yet coming to life but very soon it will come to life.
A few runners around,
Walkers and just looking at the building.
Some of these are the old buildings that would have been used when this was used for shipping to unload cargo in warehouses.
It's a lovely it's a lovely little spot to walk through as I then head up into the town for my coffee and today I want to explore this whole idea of not knowing.
Now if you've been following me you'll know that for some time I've been in a space of not not knowing or not fully understanding a direction of travel and maybe a more accurate way of putting it is looking within.
Looking within and seeing what the nudge is,
Seeing where I'm drawn to go,
Seeing if there's a yes or seeing if there's a no.
And I think culturally we find it very hard to live in uncertainty.
Uncertainty or confusion or not knowing for me marks the beginning of something becoming clear but is not clear yet.
Most people though wish they could speed that process up,
The not knowing process and just get to the answer quickly and in my experience it just doesn't work like that.
And it came to light the other day I was talking to a lady who's got a very elderly old dog and she really wants to get a puppy and she's in a dilemma which is should she get a puppy whilst her very elderly dog is still alive.
And she's spoken to lots of experts and it's possible you can separate the dogs and get in different spaces and she's done a lot of research not wanting to upset her older dog and yet also knowing that she's longing for walks back up on the moor with a dog.
She was saying what do you think I should do?
Should I get the puppy or not get the puppy?
I just don't know.
And I realised that she was in a place of confusion and not knowing and was resisting that really that space of not knowing.
And for me actually just being with a confusion is just part of the experience of being human,
Being confused,
Being in a space of unknowing.
That happens before we know and when we start intellectually trying to weigh up the should I,
Shouldn't I and we draw a list of the pros and the cons we exacerbate the feeling that somehow we're just not able to make a decision and there's something wrong with us.
Where in actual fact a place of unknowing is just that,
It's just a I don't know yet.
And when I was speaking to her I just said look I don't know whether you should get another dog or not right yet.
I mean I'm not the expert and it sounds like you've really been very thoughtful as you're researching what might be the right way forward.
But what I do know is that when you don't know you don't know and that's okay it's okay to be in the place of not knowing.
And she paused a little while and then looked at me and said oh thank you.
She said I do know it's not right yet.
That was from her just momentarily settling down to feel the answer for her right in this minute and it might change tomorrow and that's fine.
So being in this space of uncertainty is just part of being human and when we fight it it seems to me we end up well just fighting ourselves really.
The feeling of not knowing will clear and we will then know and when we're in the feeling of unknowing or we're not sure about a decision we just don't know and that's okay too.
So today is just about saying if you're in a place where you don't know the answer,
You're feeling a little bit confused,
You don't know what's right,
Have you considered that just staying with that confusion and not knowing is absolutely fine.
And it just means you don't know yet and at some point you will know but you just don't know yet.
Does that make sense to you?
Let me know what your reflections are on this space of not knowing of your experience with it.
I'd love to hear from you.
