Wisdom Comes From Not-Knowing

When I was in grade school, I didn’t have a lot of friends. So like a lot of city kids, I passed the time bouncing a ball against a wall. There was a perfect one in the courtyard of our building on 171st Street, where I could hone my fastball and work out my aggression. It was perfect, until Grandma Tutu, the Puerto Rican matriarch of our building, came out and threatened to give me a pow pow on my culito if I didn’t stop making her apartment rattle. Sorry, Grandma Tutu!

We spend a lot of life bouncing a ball off a wall. We repeat the same actions and get the same reactions. We tell the same stories of woe and mistreatment to our friends, not really connecting to the people in front of us. We repeat these stories to ourselves too, not really connecting with ourselves either.

We do this, not because it's satisfying, but because it's predictable: the same angles, the same rebounds, the same familiar emotions of anger or sadness. Over time, the wall stops feeling like something we choose. It starts to feel like life itself.

This time of year, it’s common to make resolutions about what we’re going to do differently in 2026. But what is truly new? Is vowing for the 37th time to go to the gym, only to quit by mid-February, really new? Is taking your 26th vacation, seeing a slightly different landscape, and returning home to the same old resentments really new?

The Thai ajaans say that we meditate in order to see something truly new. And what is truly new appears only when we abandon our stories. "I didn't get what I deserve." “I’m no good.” “I’m falling behind.” It's not that these narratives are untrue. It's that they keep us locked in a chamber where we never see anything but the ricocheting of our thoughts.

My teacher says that wisdom comes from not-knowing. As soon as you think you know what life is about or how to be happy, you’re just bouncing a ball off a wall. It takes something new — call it faith, or simply the willingness not to know — to stop taking the same actions, to let go, and to listen. Listen. Life is speaking to you from the other side.

Photo by Arthur Leipzig