If you don’t know, you don’t know — and that’s OK

How often have you heard that the loudest one in the room is often not the most confident? That the one taking up the most room, making the most noise, is rarely the bravest, rarely the most certain?

As a young athlete, I found this was really hard to believe. It always seemed that my teammates who talked the most and the loudest probably knew what they were doing, and while that was sometimes true, they were not the ones I came to admire the most or feel the most secure around. Instead, it was the teammates who had a quiet, yet stoic air about them that I came to most admire. The ones who did not feel the need to be vocal about all they knew and all they could do, simply because they trusted that knowledge and that skill to show through their actions during competition. While I think this can be especially true in athletics, I’ve come to realize it is just as true outside of them.

This past Sunday at church, our pastor briefly mentioned that his move to come and serve at a church in Wilson did not really make “sense” for his family in many ways, yet here they are. He could not name for certain what it was that drew him here or why he felt called to come, but he came anyway.

How often is it that we are really certain about anything? We face uncertainty each day more than we do anything else, yet we still crave being the person who appears to know what is going on. Well, when I heard my pastor’s story and realized that sometimes, we just have to do what we feel is needed, even if we cannot put into words why we feel that way, it reminded me of the power of three words we often view negatively: “I don’t know.”

If I were to ask someone what they want to do today or what they want to do for their next job or even something simple like what do they want for dinner, if they said, “I don’t know,” I would probably have thought to myself, “What a lazy response!”

Now, I think that was pretty short-sighted of me. Just as the loud one in the room used to seem the most confident, as I got older, I came to gravitate toward the more quiet and reserved ones for reassurance. I see that happening in adulthood. I see myself being drawn to the people who can say, “I don’t know,” not out of laziness, but out of truth — because they are confident enough to name when they are unsure or uncertain of what else to say.

When I’ve been in classes during my undergraduate or graduate studies, the most impressive professors were the ones who could stand at the front of a classroom and say, “I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out.”

To me, there are truly few greater marks of confidence than that. For our pastor to stand at the front of a church and admit that he could not tell his family (with certainty) why he felt the need to uproot the family and move to Wilson, but to do it anyway, takes courage. To tell a congregation it is OK to have uncertainty takes courage. Despite how we may come across to those around us, most things in our day-to-day lives require facing a bit of uncertainty. At times, we may feel the need to shy away from this, or to try to choose certainty, but I think it is important to remember we face uncertainty every day, and we are still standing. Every day we wake up, the one “certainty” we can count on is uncertainty itself — we know not what lies ahead, who will walk into our lives, what we will learn, what we will do, yet somehow we go on anyway.

While I have come to deeply appreciate the quiet teammates who were confident and stoic, and I have come to admire my friends and acquaintances who can say, “I don’t know” without shame, I have come to recognize the bit of bravery we all display, every day, simply by going through it. Not knowing what lies ahead is scary, but I think it is important to remind ourselves we have done that time and time again, and we will continue to do that over and over — and we will be OK.

So, to those of us who are comfortable sitting in their own silence and facing what comes, kudos to you. To those of us who can admit “I don’t know” — that’s impressive. For me, this will be a practice, day in and day out, but I think the more we realize what we already face and overcome, the easier uncertainty becomes.

E.J. Proctor Story, a 2014 graduate of Fike High, was the starting goalkeeper for Duke’s 2015 NCAA runner–up year, 2016 Elite 8 finish and 2017 Final Four finish. Currently the Duke record holder for shutouts and goals against average, she went on to play one season professionally with the Utah Royals FC after graduating from Duke. Now back in Wilson, E.J. is assisting with coaching youth soccer players and is employed as the Lead Physical Therapist for Wilson County Schools.

The post If you don’t know, you don’t know — and that’s OK first appeared on Restoration NewsMedia .