Have you heard the saying that young people know everything, middle-aged people trust nothing, and older people believe everything?

I am not sure who came up with it, but lately I have been thinking that perhaps it needs a small correction.

The longer I am on this planet, the more I learn, the more I experience, and the more people I meet, the easier it becomes for me to admit something that would have horrified my younger self:

I don’t know everything.

In fact, I seem to know less with every passing year.

Or perhaps I simply know enough now to realize how much I don’t know.

What about you?

When we are young, certainty comes rather easily. We know how the world works, what other people should do, what governments should do, what our parents did wrong, and probably how humanity could be fixed by next Tuesday.

Then life begins adding footnotes.

People surprise us. Events do not unfold according to plan. Things we were absolutely certain about become less certain. Some people we disagreed with turn out to have a point. Some people we admired turn out to be very human.

And occasionally, to our great inconvenience, we discover that we ourselves were wrong.

I used to think admitting that was a weakness.

Now I think it may be a sign of intelligence.

There is something liberating about saying, “I don’t know.”

It does not mean we stop thinking. It does not mean we believe everything we hear or abandon common sense.

It simply means we leave the door open.

Maybe there is more to the story.

Maybe another person sees something we do not.

Maybe science has more to discover.

Maybe some of our spiritual ideas deserve another look too.

Maybe the truth is larger than whichever explanation currently makes us most comfortable.

This becomes especially important today because we seem to live in an age of spectacular certainty.

Everyone has an opinion.

Many people have several.

Social media has made it possible to become an expert on almost anything between breakfast and lunch, and by dinner we may already be correcting people who have spent thirty years studying the subject.

Technology moves quickly.

Opinions move even faster.

Wisdom, unfortunately, still seems to prefer walking.

Perhaps that is why I have become increasingly interested not only in what people believe, but in how they arrive there.

Can we look at an unconventional idea without immediately deciding it must be true?

Can we question an accepted idea without automatically deciding it must be false?

And perhaps most difficult of all, can we change our minds without feeling that we have somehow lost?

I think we can.

Our beliefs are not our identity. They are not museum pieces that must be preserved forever behind glass.

They are working models.

We build them from what we know today, and when tomorrow brings better information, perhaps we should be allowed to renovate.

Some renovations are minor.

Others require knocking down a wall.

This, I believe, is where curiosity becomes so important.

Curiosity gives us permission to investigate without immediately choosing a side. It allows us to ask questions that may be uncomfortable, unfashionable, or simply strange.

And sometimes a strange question leads somewhere interesting.

At Enlightenment Media News, that is exactly what I hope we can do.

Explore.

Question.

Listen.

Disagree occasionally.

Laugh frequently.

And remain willing to discover that the universe may be considerably more complicated than any of us imagined.

After all these years, I am becoming increasingly comfortable with three little words:

I don’t know.

The interesting part is what comes next.

Let’s find out.

— J.B. Gattini
Founder & Editor

Enlightenment Media News