Donald Rumsfeld made one memorable quotation during his tenure as G.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
In The Book of Awesome, Neil Pasricha translated Rumsfeld’s abstract theorizing into an everyday context—learning to drive a car.
First, we don’t know what we don’t know. We think that driving will be easy.
Second. we discover how much we don’t know. My first driving lesson, for example, was in an ancient Austin with barely 20 horsepower. But when I dropped the clutch, a ton of metal crow-hopped around a field. I had no idea power could be so uncontrollable.
Third, we know what we know. We learn how to use the gears, the clutch, the brakes, the steering. We learn the rules of the road. And we prove what we know by earning a driver’s licence.
Finally, says Pasricha, we reach a state where we don’t know how much we know. You drive home on autopilot. You know your car, your route, so well that you no longer have to think about it as you drive.
It seems to me that the same sort of sequence applies to other areas of life.
Learning to play a musical instrument, for example. It looks easy. Until you try it. Then you discover that you don’t know how to play any notes, let alone the right notes! So you practice, and practice, until one day your fingers act without first requiring conscious thought. And you can’t explain to a novice how you do it – you don’t know how much you know.
Try explaining a perfect golf swing, for example.
Or perhaps you get elected to public office. It feels flattering, an acknowledgement of your talents. Then you find out how difficult it is to handle the conflicting demands, the quarrels, the financial quagmires…But then you learn how to get things done without taking all the credit. You gather supporters. And one day you find that your role has become almost second nature.
It’s like life itself. To a child, being an adult or parent looks easy. Then you grow up, and discover how much you don’t know. But by trial and error, by experience, you get better at it.
I’m not convinced life can ever go on autopilot, though.
Even religion may follow the pattern.
Until a crisis hits, you take your beliefs for granted. Then a crisis—in health, business, or relationships—knocks you for a loop. And everything that you thought you knew, you realize you don’t know at all.
So you fumble your way into the future, blindfolded. You dump some former convictions. Then you find, within the debris of what you thought you knew, some underlying certainties you had previously overlooked.
But this time you know them, for sure.
Eventually, those new notions shape your life, your reactions, without ever having to think about them. They’ve become what you don’t need to know consciously.
Welcome to the new you.
Author Jim Taylor lives in Lake Country: rewrite@shaw.ca