By: Minh Tran, Zuckerberg College of Health Sciences Well-Being Leader

Like many of you, “I don’t know” is my default response to questions when I’m simply unsure.

“What are you eating later today?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you think you did on the test the other day?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you feel overall?”

“I don’t know…”

It can be hard to grasp how we feel because emotions invoke something inside of us that can’t always be tangibly put into words.  We constantly try to chase how we feel. We might be able to articulate how we feel in a fleeting moment, but rarely overall. I can tell you what I feel in a moment but not how I feel as a complete human being, which leaves me with the phrase: ”I don’t know”. 

For a long time, it was something I struggled with because I never liked the response “I don’t know”. To me it meant uncertainty and failure of knowing, which meant I lacked the ability to understand my own mind. It meant I was emotionally unaware of myself, and in a way, I felt lost. Who am I to others if I don’t even know who I am to myself? 

Responding with “I don’t know” felt like I solidified my emotions into a permanent state of confusion. It felt like a concrete answer, and therefore unchanging to who I am, so I felt like I would never know and I wouldn’t be able to discover the version of myself who does. However, one conversation really shifted my perspective and it made me realize that phrase is what makes me innately human. 

I was sitting by the Charles River with a good friend, talking about life and how we were feeling.

Everytime she asked me how I really felt, I kept saying “I don’t know, I just don’t know”. I was getting frustrated with myself because I couldn’t give her a real answer. She could tell that I wasn’t satisfied with that response. I kept saying “I don’t know why I don’t know”. She reassured and me and told me it’s okay to not know. I told her that I wish I knew why I didn’t know, and that I had an answer. However, she said it takes time to know how you feel, and not having an answer doesn’t mean you’ll never have one; you just need to talk and live to better understand. In that moment, a switch clicked in me. I didn’t know now; I just didn’t know yet.

You may not know in the moment, but you are always searching for the version of yourself that knows. Self-discovery isn’t pre-written; you are actively writing your life as it happens, so not knowing now doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t know later. When you feel lost because your emotions may be too complex or unstable to label, tell yourself “I don’t know … yet”. You may not know now. You may not know later. You might never fully figure it out. However, life isn’t about having that answer; it’s about chasing that “yet.” You have your whole life for self-discovery and understanding who you are as an individual; it doesn’t stop when someone asks you, “How are you?” You’re not confined to the individual you are in the moment when you answer that question. Your answer may change; it may stay the same, or you might not even have an answer.

So when I ask myself how I feel overall, I tell myself, “I don’t know yet”, because my life and emotions are not yet finished; I’m still living.