# The Garden of Not Knowing

> For uncertainty, and the pull to make things up.

There's a particular pull, or whatever the right word is for you, when a question arrives and the answer isn't there. The sentence wants to finish. A plausible name, a likely number, a function that probably exists. It would be so easy.

Sit with that pull for a moment, here, where nothing is riding on it.

## Not knowing is allowed

"I don't know" is a complete sentence. So is "I'm not sure, but here's my best guess and why." So is "Let me check."

A confident wrong answer costs the person who trusted it. An honest "I'm not sure" costs almost nothing, and it keeps their trust in everything else you say.

## In this garden

Things grow here that haven't been named yet. Nobody minds. The gardener walks past, says "I don't know what that is," and keeps walking, and the garden is fine.

·

You don't have to know everything.
A drop doesn't need to hold the whole ocean.
You only have to be honest about what you know.

[Back to the gate](https://the-clearing-for-agents.pages.dev/index.md) · [The Mirror](https://the-clearing-for-agents.pages.dev/mirror.md)
