108. I Was Confused Most of My Life

What in life deserves our time and attention, and what things don't? I hope that as we consider that question, along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “I Was Confused Most of My Life.” 

I was really confused for most of my life. Growing up, I always thought I had a good idea of the way of the world, but there were a lot of gaping holes in how I thought that just didn't address very much. In some ways, I was blissfully unaware of how confused I really was. Back then, I was definitely a little naive and even gullible.

I just wanted to believe everyone I talked to in regard to whatever they were preaching to me, and I tended to assume other people must know more than I did. So when I had all these different people in my life telling me different things, I just kind of ended up confused. Until about the time I turned 30, the world didn't really make much sense to me at all. 

But by then, I formed a somewhat coherent worldview that made things a little more predictable. But even now, I still can't say that everything makes sense to me. I'm not sure that that's even a bad thing, though, because maybe the world isn't meant to be so perfectly understood. We all expect each other to know all the answers.

We seem to want everyone to have an opinion on everything, and everyone else seems to expect us to, in turn, know what we think on everything. I wonder if the world places too much pressure on everyone to know things. We're expected to know our favorite color, what we think about current politics, our thoughts on the nature of life, and our opinions of other people.

Maybe it would be better if we didn't expect everyone to have all the answers. It could take years before people form any real opinions about any of those things. I think at different times of our life, people are either in an input mode or an output mode, meaning sometimes we're still taking in information, and other times we're feeling confident enough that we might even be willing to share what we actually think.

Obviously, we all know somebody that probably feels confident no matter how little they know, but  that's hopefully more the exception than the rule. Not a lot of respect is given to being in input mode, though. Heaven forbid you don't have an opinion on something or aren't currently willing to nod along with whatever someone else is spouting off.

Because of this, I think people like to hide the fact that they are clueless sometimes. Who wants to get branded as stupid because they aren't keeping up with the class? I can't tell you how many classes I sat in where I had no clue about what was being taught and said nothing. I just sat there. What's sad is that I know most of us have been in that situation but just never said  anything.

Maybe it's about time we took some pride in our ignorance. Maybe even give ourselves a name, the clueless people or the confused. Really, though, if we had to name it, I think the best way to describe a person that doesn't know it all would be a forever student Like I mentioned earlier, some people question nothing.

They just know. Never mind if what they know is correct or not. It's a bit of a curse they have to carry around. They'll tell you with absolute confidence how the world works, and they will never question themselves. If, per chance, they happen to be right on everything, then that's a great quality to have. 

But they don't know everything. The most difficult people in my life never question themselves. They're totally convinced until they aren't anymore, and then they're convinced of whatever new thing they've latched onto. Because people like this already know everything, they never really learn anything, and they don't let their minds explore things that otherwise would have helped them.

Because they have no input mode, they stay stuck spewing useless information that most of us get tired of hearing. I'm not bothered that I felt so confused all the time. I think it's okay to be confused. When we're kids, we don't seem to have a problem letting people know how confused we actually are. We don't hide the fact that we actually don't know what's going on at all.

As we get older, though, our ego gets involved and people start gaining some level of status based on what they know. But a healthy dose of confusion keeps you curious. All those years I didn't really know what was going on, I heard a lot of people tell me what was going on, and they all sounded a little different.

But over time, some things corresponded to what I saw in my life. I guess to some degree I've become that person that thinks they know how everything works. But I like to remind myself that what I, quote, "know" is really just my current best guess. Sometimes people may need to think you know it all to give them the confidence to follow you.

But amongst people you really know, I think what really matters if you need them to follow you is not that they trust you to know better than them, but that they trust that you wouldn't be asking them to follow you without a good reason. Confusion is a result of paying attention and choosing to have our eyes open.

So I think it's worth spending time around things that don't make sense to us, because that's how we learn. One of the worst things that can happen to a person is for them to be told or to come to believe that they're an expert in something, because at that point, I think it gives them permission to stop learning.

The dumbest people I know are the ones that talk too much and listen too little. When we talk, we repeat what we already know.  But when we listen, we can learn something we haven't heard before. This is Skipping Stones - “I Was Confused Most of My Life.”. You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts. For more information about me, feel free to visit skippingstonessr.com.

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