Humans are equipped with very basic set of instincts to help keep us alive, but those instincts drive a minuscule portion of our actual experience. Beyond the universal instincts, our experience is primarily driven by our perception. Where perception is generally considered the process of being aware of something. But before you can be aware of something, you need a language or framework to assign it a meaning that is sufficiently unique and informative. So for most of us, language acts as the set of building blocks for creating perception. When you think about it, it’s a bit scary how important language has become. It governs our entire inner dialogue and base of knowledge, which are the primary ingredients for perception.

As we perceive something, we check our existing knowledge base for pieces that allow us categorize, or draw awareness to, the experience. The pieces of existing knowledge get combined to then create more knowledge; which, in its simplest hierarchical form, might be described as letters creating words, and words creating concepts. Consequently, each one of us ends up with an impossibly unique and massive web of concepts responsible for our personal human experience.

Acknowledging the difference between what people know is where empathy begins. To illustrate, let’s consider the same exact experience for two different people. Person 1 walks through a ten foot long alley that’s basically pitch black and the first concept they hit is fear of the dark, but connected to fear is a concept from a book they read that contains breathing exercises to stabilize themselves. As they’re breathing, they pull an older but just as powerful concept that their grandmother taught them as a child: “Whenever you’re scared, you say ‘I’m Person 1, and I am not afraid’.” Person 1 smirks in between breathes at the encouraging memory of their grandma. Now, Person 2 walks through the same dark alley and the first concepts they hit are fear and wrongness, as they recall their mother saying “never let yourself walk down a dark alley alone” hundreds of times. Then, the fear concept is linked to a recent article Person 2 read on people being kidnapped in alleys. While the wrongness concept is linked to recent thoughts of low self esteem for Person 2 always feeling like they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and will never live up to their mother’s expectations. Then, as Person 2 begins to feel overwhelmed, they begin to cry. A radically different outcome from Person 1, despite going through the exact same experience. In order for Person 1 to have empathy for Person 2’s radically different behavior, they would have to understand the difference in their knowledge graph.

If giving power to the differences in people’s knowledge is where empathy begins, then becoming comfortable with how little you actually know is where enlightenment begins. Incidentally, there’s more of a challenge here than meets the eye because most people are comfortable operating within the sphere of what they do know or what they can learn. Understandably, thinking about how much you don’t know, instead of using what you do know, doesn’t really feel productive. But the more you acknowledge that there are things that you don’t know that seem to have an effect on you, the more you can shape your knowledge to curate your experience. Thinking back a bit, this concept could have really helped our friend Person 2. The first step for turning their dark alley experience from one of horror to one of triumph is admitting that they don’t know how to control themselves when they’re scared. Such admittance is the gateway to new concepts that help achieve the desired result.

Then why aren’t more people proud to announce things they don’t know? The answer is found in people’s knowledge graphs. If you look at the first couple links associated with ‘I don’t know X’, then you’re almost guaranteed to find shame because in most public settings like school and work, saying ‘I don’t know’ communicates shame and wrongfulness. Oddly, ‘knowing’ seems to be the default expectation. So in order to protect what’s likely to be an already bruised ego, people avoid saying ‘I don’t know’ as much as possible.

Instead of dodging ‘I don’t know’ you should be hunting it because the more we can articulate what we don’t know, the better we can shape what we do know. For it is knowledge that ultimately shapes our experience. For a moment, imagine everything miserable happening to you in the last year actually feeling positive just because of what you know. Truly, it’s a concept that’s powerful enough to not be ignored once it clicks.