Never Say "I Don't Know"

Image credit: Photo by Meredith_Farmer on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

During high school and college, I spent my share of time (like so many other young adults) working in retail. One particular employer had a credo I completely embraced: Never tell a customer, "I don't know." If we employees didn't know the answer to a question, we were to say that we'd check, drop everything else we were doing and do whatever it took to find a satisfactory answer as quickly as possible. Wow! How perfect was that? After all, it was exactly the level of service I wanted when I went out shopping myself. I mean who doesn't hate it when an employee just shrugs and walks away?

But "never say I don't know" resonated with me at levels deeper than my experiences at the mall. More than a mantra for my shopping, it was a mantra for my life. It was reinforced in my home and personal life, when giving people the smooth, quick answers they wanted kept them happy. It was reinforced in my jobs, where my ability and desire to please was rewarded with raises and promotions. It was reinforced in the classroom, where my ability to intuit and give the answer the professor seemed likely to want made me highly successful.

Life was a series of questions to which I needed to find the right answer. For everything from "What do you think the white whale in Moby Dick symbolizes?" or "How do you think the economic situation in Europe led to the development of World War II?" to "Where should we go for dinner?" or "How do you feel about changing this meeting structure?", I had the right answers. I wouldn't actually consider what I thought about those problems. That kind of analysis is far too time consuming and difficult, and if the analysis itself isn't, the disagreements likely to ensue are. I was rewarded in every area of my life for having a plausible answer and never saying "I don't know."

However, I'm finding the same ability, the same approach, that made me a successful student and employee is working less well for me as I work on my personal growth. As I work through the 12 Steps with my online group, I've found it hindering me.

When the workbook our group is using poses a question like, "What fears do you have around surrendering your character defects?", my first answer is, "I don't know. I don't really think I feel any fear. Maybe I feel... Hm, what is it that I feel?" But a voice in my head quickly cuts me off and says, "Stop screwing around. You can't say you don't know. And you can't say you don't have any fears. You're supposed to have fear. It's right there in the question. So, we've settled it. You have fear. And since you couldn't even figure out if you had fear, you're not likely to figure out what that fear is and you don't have more time left to think about it. So, let's see... The likeliest fear most people have is that they are going to lose some part of themselves. You've read and heard that from other people before. So, that's your answer: you're afraid you're going to lose who you are. Go ahead. Write it down. You have to move on to the next question. That's the answer they want. You'll get an A. The customer will be happy. Everyone will love you. Go on! Do it!"

It is proving exceptionally difficult to move past that voice that is trying analyze the questions for clues to the "right" response and then feed me the answers. That voice has been with me so long, smoothly weaving in the expected responses, that it's been something of a surprise to find that I really don't know what I actually think or feel on quite a number of subjects anymore. It takes time to tease out those answers: time for analysis that isn't rewarded by a society (one I very much want to please) that prefers answers. And not just any answers, but quick, confident, agreeable answers. So, after 40 years of training myself never to say "I don't know" in order to keep the customer satisfied, I'm starting to see that the real customer is me, and I'm finally having to retrain myself to say "I don't know" in order to keep myself satisfied.