Those Three Little Words
When You Know, You Know
THOSE THREE LITTLE WORDS, when you said them to me, for a moment, brought my world to a halt.
I suddenly saw how at ease you were with me—and with yourself, so sure in your skin. It was a moment of the rarest and rawest intimacy, a new bridge built over an everlasting gulf.
I wanted to open all the doors they unlocked—those three words—and answer all the beautiful questions they birthed. Yet it was just as nice to do nothing, to sit with you and let them hang in the stunned silence that followed.
It was their sincerity that got me the most. Their plain and self-evident authenticity. There was no façade of all-knowingness, but a glimmer of all the ways we could choose to look at things now.
I knew I could finally stop playing games and second guessing; I just needed to hear those three little words.
To think: Where would passion, where would progress, where would the whole of science and damn creation be without them?!
And you! brave enough to say them! when you had so much to gain and so much to preserve by not saying them, or by saying something else—something more composed, or something untrue.
I know what it takes to say them and mean them. And that’s why I’m so touched. Among the things we do for love, they might be the most validating three words we have.
So, thank you. Thanks for showing me that the most meaningful conversations, the most profound connections, start not with answers, but with the humility and courage to say, “I don't know.”
Thank you Becky at
, Paudan at , Priya at , Mohammad at , Miche at and Diana-Maria Demco for reading drafts of this.
This line,
"And you! brave enough to say them! when you had so much to gain and so much to preserve by not saying them". How true and apt.
One of those brilliantly laid out articles, which made me want to scroll up and read it all over again. Loved it.
Hi Harrison, I understand what you’re saying. I’m also wary of strong opinions/ knowledge proclaimed instantly. Of course sometimes it seems totally valid.
I wonder whether our fear to say I don’t know stems from the years of schooling where there always was a definitive answer and it was a failure not to know. But that was mainly about facts, not perspective. I think kids these days have lessons in PSHE which might stand for Psychological, social and health education? They have discussions on important topics and maybe they can be taught that you can ask for time to think about an answer or even just say you have no answer. And that is ok and respected. Maybe the next generation will not feel the pressure to be ‘ sure’ ?
That reminds me of some advice a senior lawyer gave me when I started out. He said ‘ you don’t need to be right, you need to be sure’. I was horrified. He was talking about presenting confidence in front of the client. Now there’s a topic…………