Some lessons come out of the blue. Yes, I’m on a sincere quest to know myself – but damn! Those revelations that catch me sideways are booger-bears.
While I’m familiar with the “Aha!” of sudden insight, a recent and unexpected epiphany threw me.
Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart explores the language of experience. She helps us define meaning and gain understanding from emotions. In the chapter on “Places We Go When It’s Beyond Us” her insights helped me appreciate that surprising and confusing Eureka moment.
She began quoting Adam Grant who wrote Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know:
“I need time for my confusion.” Confusion can be a cue that there’s new territory to be explored or a fresh puzzle to be solved.”
She continues saying “.. confusion like many uncomfortable things in life, is vital for learning. According to research, confusion has the potential to motivate, lead to deep learning, and trigger problem solving.”
With my area of focus the past six months crystalizing, I found that I’d hunkered down in my story. When I was presented with some sound logic revealing a persistent blind-spot I was dumbfounded.
Had to sit with that discomfort for a little minute.
However, it led me to move into another emotion Ms. Brown groups with confusion – curiosity.
Many of my recent discoveries are sound, and I’m pointed in the right direction. But the nuance I found by removing this barrier revealed a treasure trove to explore.
Now, I can’t cop to being comfortable sitting in confusion; but curiosity motivates me.
I KNOW – that I don’t know what I don’t know. I have decades of willingness to be uncomfortable and risk being wrong under my belt. And still, I have blind spots.
So let me be curious and follow the breadcrumbs of confusion. Let me hold that space and continue to surprise myself.
“Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty. We have to ask questions, admit to not knowing, risk being told that we shouldn’t be asking, and, sometimes, make discoveries that lead to discomfort.”
― Brené Brown; Atlas of the Heart
The last time I read The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel, mom was diagnosed with brain cancer – then two months later a workplace reorganization relieved me of my management responsibilities. First my heart was broken, then my ego crushed. A definite low point.
A melancholy infected me recently. Not the familiar personal struggle to overcome in private – but a more existential communal misery. I’m reaching for familiar tools – strong friendships, long talks; helping others, caring for animals; exercise and involvement.