I don’t know!!!

I remember when I did my first practicum in 2007. I was 26 and had decided on career change away from Property marketing and maintenance. I began at studying a Masters of Teaching and had to do my first prac at Ingleburn High School in Sydney.

I rolled my sleeves and got ready to teach Commerce to Year 10 students. Yet the most memorable feeling that has stayed with me 11 years on is the fear that I may be asked a question I did not have an answer to. What if I get asked a question about a Business term or idea that I did not know an answer to? This feeling stayed with me for a long time especially in my first year of teaching (2008) when I was asked to Teach English for a Term. I mean I wrote my first English word when I was 11 Years old.

Life has many twists and turns. As I embark on the priesthood dare I say whenever I get asked to present about some religious topic/question/issue, hidden in my heart is a fear, what if I get asked a question I don’t have an answer to? Thus, I tend to always over prepare. This is something that I have realised about myself. I am scared to say “I don’t know.” Aren’t we all?

This manifests itself on a number of levels as I come to reflect on this fear. I feel as I am in the middle of a conversation and I am not sure of an answer, I tend to google a word, a definition, a date, a concept, a teaching. I tend to get anxious and hurriedly look for an answer. When I find it, I feel much better and get short term relief. Thank God for the smart phone!

Certainly, another area is how I manage to have an opinion on most matters. Some people especially in my culture, are in love with sideline commentaries and judgments. They would be your usual people who have never played or been to a game but are very critical.

How often I am asked to give my opinion on a global or local matter that I know little about?

How often I get asked to comment on the lives of others who apparently may have made poor choices in their lives or are on the wrong path of life, and I am supposed to make judgment on someone who I don’t know and never met and on a situation, I know nothing about.

We religious have a great temptation to know it all. People who are still coming to Church tend to come for answers. We are supposed to know it all. To know answers to the mystery of suffering, life and death. We feel obliged to “defend” God. Our greatest problem or fear is that we don’t know how to say “I don’t’ know.” To be okay with not knowing.

Deep beneath the surface, we are afraid to know nothing, to be poor. We feel humiliated! We think humiliation means rejection and rejection means abandonment and loneliness. So to fit in, we like to sound like experts on anything and everything. Heavy stuff I know! But this is the deep truth behind our inability to say “I don’t know”. It is our need to be accepted and loved that it at the root of the fear. It is our incapability to stand in poverty.

Yet to live the Gospel is to stand naked and accept our inabilities and limitations. To be poor, like the One who became poor for us. We don’t know everything! For that matter we know very little! With the rise of social media communication, and excessive news, we are always asked to make a “comment”. I have left facebook a year ago, perhaps because I got tired of highly opinionated people who cannot humbly say “I don’t know”. But perhaps that doesn’t get too many likes or shares for that matter.

Perhaps next time I get asked, I should accept the emptiness of not knowing, not having an answer or at least a ready-made one. Perhaps I can listen more in silence and see what lies beneath the surface in the questions others are asking. Perhaps it’s time to say nothing and discover my emptiness. Perhaps there is no answer. Perhaps there is something on the other side of sitting in nakedness and poverty. There may be, there may be not. I don’t know.