I’m recycling this post from February 2019. The message about not needing to know everything all the time is still a valid one. Enjoy.
My therapist said something to me this week that I’d heard before but this time I really heard. He told me, “There are some things you don’t need to know.” I’m a curious person and want to know everything! Curiosity is a key component of being a journalist; it’s my job to find out as much as possible about a story. However, truly, there are some things I don’t need to know.
I understand this concept better when I think of children. Children are not served by hearing the full details of scary or complex things. We don’t tell them graphic details of war or rape. We may paint with broad brushstrokes or present information in a way they understand, but children don’t need to know everything.
In many spiritual traditions, God/higher power/the divine is parentified. We are usually called divine children of God or a variation of that, and so it follows that higher power treats us the same way a parent would, meaning, the universe shields us from certain information. I’ve said before if I knew all the things the universe had in store for me, I would get overwhelmed. That continues to be true. After contemplating I don’t need to know everything about the future, I feel more at ease. I feel more at peace. I trust that while in my professional life it’s my job to gather as much information as possible, the same doesn’t apply to my personal one.
Sometimes it’s OK to be in the dark. Photo by Molly Blackbird on Unsplash
We have the saying, “Ignorance is bliss.” I usually think about that expression with wistfulness, wishing I could go back in time and remain ignorant of bad news. Or I utter it with envy, wishing I could be like someone else who doesn’t know what I know. However, maybe I can continue to experience bliss in the form of ignorance by remembering I don’t have to answer every question; I don’t have to know what will happen next. Maybe it’s OK for me to be in the dark sometimes and trust it’s for a good reason. Perhaps I can relax into the knowledge I am still a child and there is still a parent taking care of me. Not my birth parents, although them too, but also an unseen parent, a mystical parent.
My spiritual teacher says Cosmic Consciousness must look after us, the divine children. He also said this Cosmic Consciousness does whatever is best for us, and that this divine energy better knows our needs and necessities.
“A child of two months does not know what she requires; her mother knows,” he wrote. “She is solely dependent upon her mother. Similarly, devotees are solely dependent on the Cosmic Father, and for that reason, the Cosmic Father has a special responsibility.”
For today anyway, I’m feeling into that more, letting myself be a child. I’m letting myself swim in ignorance, recognizing the bliss that comes with it. I’m remembering I don’t need to know everything. That sometimes there’s value in staying in the dark.
I dream of a world where we realize sometimes it’s OK to not know. A world where we understand that sometimes being in the dark is what’s best. A world where we realize we are like children and there is a force greater than us in the world. A world where we remember that force is here, acting as our parent.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Something strange happened to me on Thursday. In the afternoon I heard a helicopter circling and peered out my window to identify its location. When I looked out my bedroom window, I spotted not only the helicopter above me, but also a swarm of police cars on the street behind my house. I’m on a hill so the cars were not directly behind me but I could still see them.
I jumped on Twitter and used all the hashtags that came to mind to determine why police cars and a helicopter parked near my house. I googled local news and even called the police nonemergency number. After waiting on hold for nearly 10 minutes I hung up. I couldn’t find an answer to my question. I thought about walking up to a police officer and asking about the fuss, but then I questioned that. “Do you really need to know? Maybe it’s better if you don’t.”
Does this person need to know what they’re walking on or is it better if they don’t, being a sewer and all? Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash
Confession, although I suspect you already guessed this about me, I don’t watch true crime. I’m not a Law and Order junkie, or a CSI fanatic. I don’t enjoy murders and murder mysteries because I’m too sensitive. That means my brain doesn’t come up with gruesome scenarios, and let’s be honest, reality is much grimmer than my personal imagination. Some of the things people do to one another would never occur to me. But if there are police cars and a helicopter involved, the situation is probably not because someone accumulated parking tickets. Do I need to know that person lives nearby? I do not. (Note: If your google search is more fruitful than mine, please don’t tell me why the police visited my neighborhood unless it is for something innocuous like littering.)
This perspective is a huge shift for me because I want to know everything. My brain tells me I’ll be safer if I know all the details. But is that really true? Does knowing about a murder in Omaha make me safer here in Oakland? Or does it only succeed in making me scared to go to Omaha? All weekend I’ve wrestled with this, itching to check Twitter to find out what happened on Thursday. I resist because once I learn something, that information cannot be unlearned. It’s like trying to suck toothpaste back into a tube.
What also comes to mind is the converse of what I’ve shared: If I need to know something, I will. My higher power will arrange things so I find out information. I’ll run into someone at a party, I’ll overhear a conversation on the street, etc. I searched for a quote here from my spiritual teacher to throw in and came across this one: “[T]he source of physical knowledge is bound up by time, space, and person. With the change of time, space, and person, physical knowledge will change. Hence it is not a permanent knowledge.”
I derive comfort from that quote because it means even if someone awful lives behind me now, it doesn’t mean they always will. Maybe knowledge, like safety, is a snapshot in time. And if it’s a snapshot in time, what’s the point in scaring myself right now?
I dream of a world where we recognize sometimes it’s better to stay in the dark. A world where we realize if we’re meant to know something, we will. A world where we understand sometimes we don’t need to know.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.