Ranting On...The Power of "I Don't Know"

For many years, this blog was called "The Many Rantings of John" as more of a wish fulfillment situation, the focus really being on "many" in hopes that I would write it consistently.  Rantings were not really a part of this, and in retrospect, was a terrible name for the blog, but one that I was stuck with after so many years and grew to begrudgingly love.  However, "Friday Rants" was a series I did for many years in a quest to give that name some meaning, and as we close out our final Friday on the blog (the final post will be on Monday), I wanted to bring it back.  One last "Ranting On..." for the road.

The problem for me this week is that I wasn't entirely sure what to write about for Friday.  The obvious answer, to anyone, would be something more about the election.  Maybe do one last bit about the insanity of this year's political season, the way that it's become increasingly clear the news media not only doesn't know how to handle Trump, they also don't know how to handle his media manipulations anymore (or perhaps are happy to help them).  Or talk about how this feels like the end of the Trump Era, which it does; either he loses and this is the last time we ever see Trump on a ballot, or he wins and the Trump Era ultimately becomes the American Era, as we'll never escape him at this point if he does win.

But I've been writing about the election for so long, and I've already given Trump my final article on this blog, which will be the seventh installment in the Election Night Guide, so that feels like he's taken enough of my time this final week.  I could write about other things that are on my opinionated mind, or have been the past month.  Conversations about box office replacing a film's worth is a good one (and a more complicated tangent than I expected based on people's reactions online), or maybe a last coda on my thoughts on Agatha All Along & Only Murders in the Building, both TV shows whose most recent seasons have finished this week.  But again, that felt so flighty, so ephemeral for a "final" rant.

Or I could write what I'm feeling right now.  I do journal, but a journal will never leave you-it's meant to be thoughts that you don't want the world to know.  I am completing what has been, for me specifically, the hardest & scariest & loneliest week of my life (to date).  Part of what I'm experiencing right now, I want to keep to myself, and part of it I want to scream because I am so afraid, not just of what is to come, but also that the people I tell will dismiss what I'm saying not because it's not true, but because it's too hard to deal with themselves, hoping that deferring it will mean not having the conversation, not realizing in the process that I have to have the conversation even if it's alone, as I'm stuck here.  I keep thinking of that scene in The English Patient when Ralph Fiennes shouts at Kristin Scott Thomas where he says "how can you stand there...how can you ever smile as if your life hadn't capsized?" except it's me shouting at a mirror because it's the only place I know where to look.

But (while this is VERY "I don't want to talk about it" as a Facebook status, which is basically begging for more questions to suddenly curious minds), this isn't the place for that.  I care about you readers, but I don't know you in real life (well, most of you), and you're not the audience for such a conversation...it's one that needs to be with someone I've known for years, not someone who (very kindly) offers on the internet.  So I am left with "I don't know" for my final rant, and perhaps that is the correct place to end.

I spent most of my twenties needing things to be certain, but as I got through my thirties, I realized that certainty is never really achievable.  I once heard someone say that you know you're ready to finish your twenties when you know the power of the word "no," that you finally have enough self-identity to understand what is and isn't for you.  But I think the most powerful phrase I learned in my thirties was "I don't know."  Letting yourself become at peace with what you don't know, not just in yourself, but also in the people around you.  Your uncertainty being something you're comfortable with...realizing your confidence in your own knowledge of other people's feelings isn't true-in reality, you are clueless & maybe just need to listen.  Not needing to have an opinion on everything, the impossible nature of not knowing what will happen next.  Dealing with your own doubts, dealing with your loved one's doubts.  Growing up is understanding that you don't know the answer to every question, and in some cases, you'll never get satisfaction as to why.

It's a phrase I've used a lot this week.  About the election, about the source of my stress, about a world where increasingly it feels like angry people are so willing to tear it down just so no one else can feel joy themselves.  Why?  Why is this happening right now?  I don't know.  And the reality is that some of the biggest things in life, the biggest mysteries, you won't know.  Not things like Stonehenge or the JFK assassination, I mean the real mysteries that haunt you.  Why did that friendship stop, and why couldn't I make that romantic relationship work?  Why didn't I ever achieve that dream, and why did that person I loved die so young?  These are the actual mysteries that keep us up at night...these are where doubt & worry reside.  Understanding that you won't get answers to these questions is troubling, but there's also a freedom to it.  Because while we'll never lose that doubt & worry, they'll always come back, the reality is that "I don't know" isn't giving up, it's not an answer to a fight that needs to be won (because some things in life are worth conversing & figuring out)...it's a freedom from the things that you know, in your heart, you''ll never really get to understand the logic behind, because ultimately the only way to understand them is to realize that you can't.