What do you do, when you don’t know what to do?

I have so many questions swirling around about our President, our government, our ability to survive together as a country. Then there’s my ability to make a new sculpture, figure how to paint it and what happens? I get stuck. I want answers, yes. But most of all I want to do something, I just don’t know what to do. 

This question from an email blog by author, Tara Mohr, felt more like a solution than a question. Tara got her inspiration from another author, John Holt, who said, “The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how do we behave when we don’t know what to do.”

There have been many, many times in my life when what I knew wasn’t enough. I had a problem to solve, a yearning to do and no clear idea of what to do to get there. The biggest question is what did I do next?

Get mad?

Yes, frustration is a hard place to be for everyone. Just ask my three-year old granddaughter and she’ll tell you straight out, “I don’t like it!” Yes, I tell her, it’s frustrating when the puzzle pieces don’t fit together, the paint spills or the pencil gets lost under the couch. 

But throwing the puzzle pieces around only makes it worse, right? I don’t tell her I’ve had my own times of literally throwing clay in frustration. We’ve all been there, but staying there solves nothing. And it still leaves us in the land of don’t know. 

Breathe. 

That’s what I tell myself and now, what I tell my little granddaughter. Faced with not knowing what to do, I face it by breathing. I let myself off the hook of being all-knowing. I revisit all those times in my life when I was lost and hiding my own ignorance. Or so overwhelmed that all I wanted to do was run away. 

Even though, sometimes I did run away, and still do, in the form of busyness. I know that’s just a way to channel my loose and frustrated energy. And it’s a good tool for me as long as I don’t overuse it. 

Other tools I use are obvious to most of us. I sought out books, classes and teachers. I journaled. Walked in the woods. Sat in silence listening for guidance. I stared out the window and took solace in the wide open sky that somewhere out there a solution lived and maybe I just needed to live a little longer to find it. 

True problem solving isn’t like algebra. 

And I loved algebra in school. But as comforting as a linear equation is on paper, life as we all know, is not like that at all. Life requires that we learn as much as we can. But it also requires us to understand no matter how much we know, we will all have times when we don’t know what to do. 

But that’s the essence of truth, of creativity, of truly living. Embracing the questions. Letting yourself not know everything. Feeling the growing pains of frustration and fear. And breathe knowing it will lead to growth.