You don’t know what you’re doing.

…but if you trust, then knowing doesn’t really matter.

If you allow the pace and Will of your heart to guide your sails with intuitive winds, you begin to rely on something stronger than simple “knowing.”

You don’t know what you’re doing, and that’s perfectly fine. Will you ever give up the illusion that life is an equation that can be mastered? Will you admit—if only to yourself, if only for the sake of humbling your ego—that there are no answers to life’s biggest questions?

Over history, humanity has long suspected the mysterious something within ourselves that knows our purpose greater than our conscious minds. We call it intuition. We call it instinct, our gut, our heart. Destiny. Fate. Our logic and our reason naturally clash with this eternal mystery of internal-knowing. But when you tell yourself, “I don’t know what I’m doing,” you are neither admitting defeat nor surrender. Suddenly, the pill of “not knowing” becomes just slightly easier to swallow.

Going without knowing. Trusting without must-ing. Living without over-willing.

This is the Art of Direction Without Destination. This is the Joyful Frustration of Indefinable Being.

An Identity Challenge

“If there was one thing you could tell me about yourself to let me get know who you are—other than your job title, line of work or describing ‘what you do’—what would it be?”

I posed a challenge to my friends across Twitter and Facebook a few weeks ago. I asked you to describe “who you are” without regurgitating “what you do.”

From what I’m told, the hardened association of “who I am” and “what I do professionally or in my career” is apparently a very American characteristic. And it’s no real surprise that we as human beings would assign intrinsic value to what a person does for a living: it’s another instance of our brains categorizing and sorting through assumptions, labels and stereotypes in attempts of better understanding this new person whom I’ve just met.

But is what I do really who I am?

The Joyful Frustration of Indefinable Being

Call me an idealist, call me an ideologue… I don’t believe what I do encapsulates who I am. Maybe that’s because of how frustrating it is to try to define what you’re doing when it doesn’t have a cushy label, a cozy title, an assigned salary with a numerical value.

At the same time, I’m overjoyed to live an existence that doesn’t have a simple label, title or description. I’m striving to live a life of indefinable Being. Don’t get me wrong. It’s scary. It’s unknown. It’s frustrating. It invites critics and cynics and being completely misunderstood.

And I can safely say, I don’t know what the hell I am doing.

But as soon my life bears a hardened, stagnant definability… I’ll know that my mission is going awry. I’ll know that I must break free and begin anew. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing. But, I trust. So “knowing” doesn’t really matter.

…Do you?

If you don’t, inquire within yourself as to why. Then, stop asking altogether. Instead of trying to logically explain your answer, feel. This is trust. Don’t reason or rationalize. Pause your thinking: your mind is but a tool, not a way of Being.

What does your heart know, that your head can’t ever truly understand?

Shift from your mind and to your heart. Shift away from “self-improvement” and into “self-mastery”. Shift away from “personal development” and into “potential-realization”. Shift from “Life sucks and then you die” and to the Art of Direction Without Destination.

And, most of all, shift from “You don’t know what you’re doing” to the Joyful Frustration of Indefinable Being.

Flickr photo by: Ethan Lofton