{"id":1069,"date":"2026-11-10T10:39:58","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T15:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2026-11-10T10:39:59","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T15:39:59","slug":"i-dont-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/2026\/11\/10\/i-dont-know\/","title":{"rendered":"I Don\u2019t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By: Minh Tran, Zuckerberg College of Health Sciences Well-Being Leader<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many of you, \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d is my default response to questions when I\u2019m simply unsure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWhat are you eating later today?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cHow do you think you did on the test the other day?\u201d

\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cHow do you feel overall?\u201d

\u201cI don\u2019t know\u2026”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It can be hard to grasp how we feel because emotions invoke something inside of us that can\u2019t always be tangibly put into words.\u00a0 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: \u201dI don\u2019t know\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a long time, it was something I struggled with because I never liked the response \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d. 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\u2019t even know who I am to myself? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding with \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d 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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was sitting by the Charles River with a good friend, talking about life and how we were feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everytime she asked me how I really felt, I kept saying \u201cI don\u2019t know, I just don\u2019t know\u201d. I was getting frustrated with myself because I couldn\u2019t give her a real answer. She could tell that I wasn\u2019t satisfied with that response. I kept saying \u201cI don\u2019t know why I don\u2019t know\u201d. She reassured and me and told me it\u2019s okay to not know. I told her that I wish I knew why I didn\u2019t know, and that I had an answer. However, she said it takes time to know how you feel, and not having an answer doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll never have one; you just need to talk and live to better understand. In that moment, a switch clicked in me. I didn\u2019t know now; I just didn\u2019t know yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may not know in the moment, but you are always searching for the version of yourself that knows. Self-discovery isn\u2019t pre-written; you are actively writing your life as it happens, so not knowing now doesn\u2019t necessarily mean you won\u2019t know later. When you feel lost because your emotions may be too complex or unstable to label, tell yourself \u201cI don\u2019t know \u2026 yet\u201d. 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 \u201cyet.\u201d You have your whole life for self-discovery and understanding who you are as an individual; it doesn\u2019t stop when someone asks you, \u201cHow are you?\u201d You\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when I ask myself how I feel overall, I tell myself, \u201cI don\u2019t know yet\u201d, because my life and emotions are not yet finished; I\u2019m still living. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Minh Tran, Zuckerberg College of Health Sciences Well-Being Leader Like many of you, \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d is my default response to questions when I\u2019m simply unsure. \u201cWhat are you eating later today?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d \u201cHow do you think … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1762,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emotional","category-intellectual"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1762"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1070,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/wellbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}