Readiness for life starts with a curious mind, becoming comfortable not knowing, or at least, not knowing better.
While we are teachable, we are available for novelty, surprise, benefitting from others' experience. We get to not fall into traps, or to get out of them sooner. Candour is playful, humble, connecting, generous. It doesn't have an agenda, doesn't need anything other than reciprocity to keep alive.
In action, candour means trying instead of forecasting, and being genuinely open to any outcome, result, unfolding. It is unconditional; In candour, we don't need to know what comes next to show up, to love, to trust.
Our untainted and unadorned self can look at the world with curiosity, and no set expectation of what things need to be.
The more we come across, the more we are stripped of our innocence as a limited view of the creation. But if we preserve our candour on the way, the infinite opportunities for awe keep us excited to share what we find and take the lead in ever expanding our outlook.
Learning is a lot about appreciating the contours of things, the contrast, the subtle differences that make things right or wrong, that makes undertaking work or fail.
Just like toddlers try disobeying, asking endlessly and pushing buttons to grasp what the rules really are, or like some animals walk along the fence to know where the territory ends, or like climbers seek a higher mountain to find out what they are made of, we need to actively try and push boundaries and not assume we know.
Nothings blinds us more to the truth than our preconceived ideas of people, places and things.
Our mind is made such that it will seek evidence confirming preset narratives: Expectations are lenses that magnify what we already know and kick the rest out of our field of vision.
If we can observe lens-free, and approach each new setting, however foreign, without apprehension or judgement, we take in what reality has to offer.
Open eyes see the light, but it takes keen eyes to see the truth.
The art of candour is mastered through disillusion, a painful discovery that authenticity is a hardly re-acquired skill much more than a natural state of being.
Confusing appearances for truth means not knowing who we are, what is worthwhile and that there is such a thing as trusting intimacy.
There is always more to know, another layer, another angle, an unexpected development, another seed planted. What we figure out is only ever just another step on the path.
Believing we've achieved finite, definitive understanding, or that there is one simple answer, is a source of confusion, error or embarrassment.
Candour is devoid of agenda. It just loves life and wants to know everything.
That impetus is straight from the source, a connector, a receptacle and condition for the transmission of experience.
This shape of seeking is selfless and holds no intention other than feeding the appetite for awe. With that kind of innocence, ideas can spark, opportunities flare up and the right people pull like to a magnet.
There is always more we can learn, wisdom is a bottomless well and knowledge a territory we can't conquer.
Infinity is a call for insatiable curiosity rather than to complacency in ignorance. Being comfortable not knowing means we can ask, we can learn, we can find out, and that we must try to succeed, as in try repeatedly.
Our ability to enjoy life relies on us feeding our curiosity and filling those gaps that keep us stranded.
Not Knowing
Youthful Folly