Saturday, January 3, 2015

You Don't Know What You Don't Know

You don’t know 
What you don't know


By Jenn Weinshenker 12312014



some times you don't know what you don't know

until you come right face to face
sa'mack 
thumb in the old eyeball
with a new belief
that contradicts everything you thought was true

shit
now what

yeah so

I was thinking about that

and then it hit me

When I've made mistakes
It was because 
I couldn’t see that huge barrel of crazy
commencing to blast through my life
toppling over everything 
I thought was absolutely
unshakable

As ludicrous as it may seem
I just about always resisted change

Instead of adjusting my point of view
I tried to rationalize what happened
and cram it into my old ways of thinking
some times I kept this up for years
until finally I was so exhausted
from dangling off the edge of nowhere
I let go
and faced the facts

then I’d beat myself up and holler inside my head
If only you would have known then
what you know now
you would have made different choices
life would have been so much better

but life isn't that way
some times
you just don't know
what you don't know

I mean I traveled and experienced lots of things
I lived a self examined life
I was being mindful of my intentions
and quick to weed through selfishness 
and self deception
and I was making some good decisions
A lot of them were good
but man some were like wow
what were you thinking 

And then I'd climb in the ring again
Why didn't I see that
And the valley I'd stumbled through
echoed  back
You were thinking through the lens of your own experience
Up to that point
you didn't know that was a possibility
you had no frame of reference for what was about to happen
Okay then...
I didn't know what I was up against  
I was completely out of the realm of my experience

I couldn't know what I didn't know

I couldn’t anticipate or see clearly what was about to happen

And I couldn’t see beyond it

because there was a bend in the road 
sometimes life is that way

out of nowhere
you get clocked up side the head

because there is this belief you had

that kept tripping you up
its like walking into a wall 
over and over again
and then one day
you see a doorway
and you move on through it

I used to think  
either 
or 
a lot
But the longer I live
the more I think
and 
is the connecting word to all of it
And then so much more became clear

I used to believe this way but now I believe another way
maybe both ways are true
Maybe absolutes are for suckers with agendas

hmmmm

now when I get all crumpled up
and wish I could have made some different choices
or wish I hadn't fought with reality and life so much
I just tell myself to chill out
stop letting unreasonable expectations
Bum you out

I mean none of us are born knowing everything
So you skinned your knees a few times
You were watching which way you were going
And your vision was askew
You couldn’t see what was coming
So what
Join the human race
And just
Dig the day
Learn what you can
Keep living mindfully
And let go of that lasso
That ego that keeps insisting
Perfection exists

 

2 comments:

  1. I agree with all that you say. You never know what is coming next. It may be something wonderful or an extreme challenge. As your poem says, "you don't know what you don't know". All you can do is your best in any given situation. You have helped me understand that and I love you for it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Cathy. I love epiphanies. They are so liberating.

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