The Beauty of Not Knowing

Journal Entry: Saturday, February 15, 2025

Fusion Series #1,555 - 2000 - collage on paper - Cecil Touchon

The Beauty of Not Knowing

I’ve always been drawn to those moments when I don’t know what’s happening. When everything feels just a little bit out-of-kilter, when you’ve dropped into something unfamiliar and your usual bag of tricks won’t work and the sense of control goes out the window. It’s in these moments, I’ve realized, that learning something new is about to happen. Composer Philip Glass once said, “The best time for learning is when you don’t know what’s happening. If you know what’s happening, there is nothing to learn.” And isn’t that the truth?

Think about it. When you know exactly what’s going on, when every step is laid out and predictable, you’re not learning—you’re just repeating what you already know. There’s no spark, no curiosity, no challenge. But when you’re thrown into the unknown? That’s when you wake up. That’s when your senses sharpen, your brain lights up, and your creativity kicks in.

Don’t get me wrong, I do take comfort in routine and in paintings where I am pretty clear where the beginning is and where finish line is going to be but even in these paintings I am looking for the unexpected where something I hadn’t thought of before might happen. Still, I am always working on things that challenge me where I don’t have a clue what is going to transpire. As I have said I like to approach art like an experiment. In an experiment you don’t know what’s going to happen, all you have is a question: “What happens if…?”

Not knowing can be uncomfortable for some people, it’s messy and unpredictable, and it forces you to confront your own limits. But it’s also exciting. It’s like being handed a blank map with just a few lines on it with no instructions, just the faintest hint that something extraordinary might be waiting if you’re willing to stumble around for a while.

I think about this a lot when I’m working on something that will cause a creative response. A creative response is when you come up with a solution you have never thought of before usually caused by a problem you have never encountered. The times I’ve felt most inspired, most alive, are the times I’ve had no clue what I was doing. The blank canvas, the empty page, the new project that feels way too big to tackle—those are the moments when I’ve learned the most. Because when you don’t know what’s happening, you’re forced to pay attention. You experiment. You ask questions. You make mistakes. And every mistake teaches you something new.

There’s also something humbling about not knowing. It reminds you that the world is so much bigger than you, so much more complex and layered than you can ever fully understand. It’s a call to stay curious, to keep exploring, to be okay with the fact that you’ll never have it all figured out.

And maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe life isn’t about getting to a place where you know everything, where everything is neat and certain and under control. Maybe it’s about staying in that place of not knowing, of learning, of discovery.

So, here’s to not knowing. Here’s to being a little lost, a little unsure, and a little out of your depth. Because in those moments, when nothing makes sense, you might just learn something that changes everything.