I Don't Know, by Gilllian

For much of my life those words represented a huge challenge; no, actually more of an obsession. If I didn't know, I had to know. This, like so many things in so many lives, began in my teens. If teachers and parents and my high school library couldn't tell me what I wanted to know, I would schlep into town on the bus and visit the big library, where I would struggle to find books with answers via the Dewey decimal system. Remember all those long narrow wooden drawers packed with cards? Off I'd scuttle eagerly to the stacks. 427.88 might have the answer.

This need to know stayed with me throughout my adult life, though tempered somewhat by so many other demands on my time.

Now, those library searches a thing of the long past, the answer to each and every I don't know is, quite literally, at our finger tips. And that, in some strange way, has cured me of my obsession. Perhaps it's just too easy; no longer the challenge it once was. Or perhaps it's overload. In searching the web for the answer to one I don't know, I inevitably find innumerable answers to more I don't knows that I didn't even know I had. (Sorry, I'm sounding a bit like Dubya!) My ignorance, I have discovered, is infinite. Or perhaps I have learned that knowledge is nothing without understanding. Every I don't know may be answered, factually, but how much understanding of the subject has that conveyed to me?

In my old, and I would like to think at least a little wiser, age, I know that none of it matters. Yes, it's good to know things. It's even better to understand them. But the only really important knowledge and understanding is of myself and those I care for. And most of that will not come from Mr. Google, or even the library. It can only come from me.

Jerry Maguire, in the movie of that name, says,

“Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I've succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you, my kind of successes."

And all I know for sure is my answer to those two most important questions - do you love your life, do you love your wife? - will never be, I don't know.

© July 2017

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.