Are we know-it-alls, or are we just scared?

Entering into your "I haven't the faintest idea" era

I’ve always had a soft spot for the know-it-alls of history and literature.

Sherlock Holmes. Ms. Frizzle. Hermione Granger. Dr. House. Moriarty. Anyone who always seemed to be a step ahead of the world got my attention, even if they lacked tact in their delivery.

(Sidenote: when I Googled famous know-it-alls, Leslie Knope popped up, and it reminded me just how differently we treat female know-it-alls from the men. If you’re a woman know-it-all, you’re often portrayed as a high strung Type A, colour-coded-binders personality. “It’s Levio-sah, not Lev-IO-sah!” If you’re a dude, you get to be a genius with a “mind palace” whose brain is simply far too advanced for us to comprehend. Funny, that, eh?)

Knowing as much as possible is one of the reasons I want to be a scientist when I was a kid. I loved the idea of spending my life learning as much as I possibly could about the world around me. As Brian Cox (the astrophysicist, not the actor) says,

“The world is beautiful to look at, but even more beautiful to understand.”

I especially love filling up my brain with the one currency that nobody can ever take away: knowledge. (No, I’m not about to launch into a stay-in-school initiative here, bear with me.)

There’s an interesting emotional component to knowing facts.

When you’re a kid, facts can be a life preserver. They’re rock solid ground at a time when our emotional insides are colliding like techtonic plates. No matter what’s going on in the world, you can lean on them like sturdy sentinels of reality. If you’re confused about life, there’s just something truly grounding about knowing why the leaves change red in the autumn, how your heart uses electrical impulses to function, or that a sea cucumber breathes out of its butt. (Just me on that last one?)

My theory is that kids love learning bizarre animal facts and the like because their worlds are so endlessly changing and shifting — and knowing something solid can feel like the only real thing you’ve got. They may not know their place in the world yet or understand their friends or parents, but they will usually proudly and loudly tell you their latest dinosaur fact, because knowing stuff feels good — like you’re you, in the world, with everyone else.

(Sidenote #2: This is why I’ve now spent years writing books about facts, so kids can find those islands of solid footing if they need it.)

But we’re creative people here, it’s worth exploring how our own perspectives fit into the balance of ‘what we know’, and ‘what gets to remain a mystery’.

Why? Because the reality is, while there are rock solid facts about the world, there’s also a whole lot of mystery — and there’s so much to learn from it if we want to be braver, more expressive people.

Today, now also as a writer and artist of both fictional and nonfictional worlds, I don’t see my job much differently than I did back in my science & academia days: both science and the arts do the same thing — they ask and answer questions about the world. We just do the asking and answering in different ways.

Here’s why this matters to your creative well being:

The less secure you are, the more you have to be right.

And the more you have to be right, the more you’ll miss out on or twist reality into something that suits you, rather than seeing what’s really there, and the opportunities it can provide for you and everyone else.

In other words, the places where you’re holding on the tightest are probably the places where your view is most distorted — and therefore most unhelpful to you.

Facts matter. I will never shame the know-it-alls of the world, because I am you. I will probably never feel like I know enough! But mystery matters, too. Exploring the spaces where we need to know-it-all, instead of allowing the nuanced reality to play out is how we can begin to see what’s really there.

With that, a few questions for you to ponder:

• Are you a know-it-all? (No shame!) If so, what areas are you most likely to cling tightly to needing to know? Jot them down. There’s good treasure to mine in there.

• Where are you happy to not know? You’re probably just fine not knowing about stuff that doesn’t really relate to you (like, how to balance on a high wire or the chemical properties of selenium). But what stuff about your own trajectory, career, future, or life feel okay to not fully understand right now? How comfortable are you just saying “Nope! No clue!” about that thing weighing on you?

• When you think about areas of your life that do feel uncertain or unknowable, how old do you feel inside? (Tip: The age you feel in this uneasy, hesitant state can often hold clues to parts of yourself that are needing a hug.)

• Bonus: As you’re scrolling around the Internet for the next week or so, notice how many times ads will play on your desire to know, selling you the answers you didn’t even realize you wanted until you opened the pocket of uncertainty in your mind. Clickbait relies on us wanting to know, but you get to decide if it matters to you.