The Exhaustion of Pretending: Why "I Don't Know" Feels Like Failure

Halloween is dead.

Well, not yet, but I'm already grieving it. It's October 29th, and I'm making breakfast thinking about how much I'm going to miss this season once it's over.

I do this every year. Start mourning Halloween before it's even happened. And the big box stores aren't helping. I went in early October and half their glorious 10-foot ghouls and macabre displays had already been shoved aside for Santa and his relentlessly cheerful elves. Can we not?

I love Halloween, not for the costumes or candy bowls, but for what it represents. It's the one time of year when we collectively agree to hold space for the unexplained. The veil between worlds. The possibility that our loved ones who've passed might still be around in ways we don't fully understand. The "what if?" of it all.

Then once Halloween actually passes and I've had my proper post-holiday grieving period (very important), I'll be ready to embrace the next season of mystery and wonder. Christmas: the lights, the music, the magic of believing something extraordinary might happen on a random Tuesday night in December. New Year's possibility that we might become entirely new versions of ourselves. I'll dive into each fully... until it's gone, and I'll grieve again.

For me, these holidays represent the rare windows when I'm allowed to dream, but not too much, about something beyond "this." When "I don't know" becomes exciting rather than threatening. When uncertainty transforms into wonder.

But these windows close so fast. And what I'm grieving isn't just Halloween or Christmas or New Year's. It's the closing of the window itself. The return to a world where being childlike, filled with wonder, believing in "what if" isn't really acceptable anymore.

There isn't room for mystery. Now it's back to the threats of the unknown and focusing on preservation.

Mystery vs. The Unknown

Here's what I've been noticing: We treat mystery and the unknown as if they're different things, when really they're the same uncertainty wearing different clothes.

Mystery feels exciting. Generative. Full of possibility. It's magic eight balls and who-dun-it novels. It's the magician asking "How did I do that?" with a wry smile. Mystery invites us to lean in, to wonder, to enjoy not knowing because the not knowing itself is part of the experience. "What if there's more than we understand?" feels like an invitation.

The Unknown feels threatening. Dangerous. Something to defend against. It's "what's next?" asked with dread instead of curiosity. It's the inability to say "I don't know" without feeling like we're failing. Like admitting uncertainty means we're unprepared, naive, or worse. The unknown demands we figure it out, predict it, control it, or at least pretend we can.

But the actual state of not knowing? It's identical. The difference is entirely in how we're relating to it. And increasingly, I think it's also about our egos.

Because here's the uncomfortable truth: We can't tolerate saying "I don't know" anymore. It feels like weakness. Like we should have an answer, a plan, a prediction. Like uncertainty itself is a personal failure rather than simply the condition of being human.

During Halloween, I can embrace the mystery of the veil between worlds with delight. But come January, that same openness to "what if there's more than we understand" feels naive. Dangerous, even. Because now uncertainty isn't wrapped in costume makeup and twinkle lights. It's outcomes we can't predict, situations we can't control, futures we desperately want to nail down. All the things, global and personal, that I genuinely can't see coming.

And I'm wondering: What if this inability to hold mystery, to experience uncertainty as anything other than threat, is actually making us less capable, not more prepared?

The Cost of Certainty

When we can't distinguish between mystery and threat, when all uncertainty becomes "the unknown" that must be eliminated or defended against, something shifts in how we operate.

We start grasping for anything that feels certain, even if it's false certainty.

I see this in how we share information. Someone posts something that confirms what we already believe, and we share it immediately. Not because we've verified it. Not because we've taken the two minutes (literally, two minutes) to check if it's actually true. We share it because it feels certain. Like proof. Like we were right all along. We're so uncomfortable with "I'm not sure" that we'd rather be certain and wrong than uncertain and learning.

And here's the thing I keep noticing when I do take those two minutes: So often, it's not true. Or it's partially true but missing crucial context. Or it's from a source with no credibility. Both sides do this. I've caught myself doing it. We're all so uncomfortable with not knowing, so desperate to feel certain, that we'll spread false information rather than sit with "I'm not sure about this yet."

The irony is brutal. In our rush to prove our certainty, we make ourselves less credible.

We do the same thing with people. Someone surprises us, challenges us, doesn't fit our existing narrative about who they are, and we rush to complete their story from partial information. We construct entire narratives about their motives, their character, their intentions, because a complete story feels safer than an incomplete one. We make rash decisions because deciding something, anything, feels more powerful than staying present with uncertainty while more information emerges.

And here's what I'm noticing: This grasping doesn't make us more prepared. It makes us more fragile. Because when we've convinced ourselves we know something we don't actually know, when reality inevitably surprises us, it doesn't feel like new information. It feels like failure. Like we should have predicted it. So we double down on the demand for certainty, which makes us grasp harder, which makes us more brittle when the next surprise comes.

The exhaustion is real. Maintaining false certainty requires c

Constant vigilance, not toward actual threats, but toward anything that might challenge our constructed sense of knowing. We have to dismiss evidence that doesn't fit. Avoid people who might complicate our narratives. Stay in information bubbles that confirm what we've decided is true.

And we still don't actually have control. We still can't predict what's coming. We've just traded the discomfort of mystery for the exhaustion of pretending.

We've just traded the discomfort of mystery for the exhaustion of pretending.

Ancient Wisdom: Living With Mystery

Here's what gets me: We're not the first humans to live in uncertain times. Not even close.

Ancient traditions, from wildly different cultures and contexts, somehow figured out how to live with mystery without either collapsing into paralysis or exhausting themselves pretending they had control.

Take the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius wasn't some naive optimist ignoring real threats. He was literally a Roman emperor dealing with plagues, wars, political conspiracies. Actual life-and-death uncertainty. But his response wasn't "figure out what's going to happen so you can prevent it." It was essentially: "You can't control what happens. You can control how you meet it."

That distinction matters. The Stoics weren't saying "don't prepare" or "don't be vigilant." They were saying "distinguish between what you can actually influence and what you're just exhausting yourself worrying about."

Or look at shamanic traditions that engaged with the veil between worlds, the exact mystery we celebrate at Halloween. They didn't approach the unknown with terror or pretend it didn't exist. They developed practices for moving through uncertainty with awareness. They understood that acknowledging forces beyond our current understanding made them MORE capable of navigating reality, not less.

They were people facing genuine threats: disease, famine, war, loss. But they built their wisdom by staying present enough to observe what was actually happening rather than what they feared might happen. They noticed patterns. They built knowledge slowly, through attention rather than assumption.

When you're not frantically grasping for certainty, when you're not in tunnel vision trying to control every outcome, you can actually SEE more. You develop wisdom through observation rather than reaction. You distinguish between signal and noise.

Treating all uncertainty as threat actually weakens your capacity to respond to real danger.

What they seemed to understand, across completely different traditions and time periods, is that treating all uncertainty as threat actually weakens your capacity to respond to real danger.

When you're exhausted from maintaining false certainty about everything, when you've trained yourself to experience all not knowing as failure, when you can't distinguish between "this requires my attention" and "this just makes me uncomfortable," you're less prepared, not more.

The strength they cultivated wasn't certainty. It was adaptability. Presence. The capacity to say "I don't know what's coming AND I trust my ability to meet it."

Not because they had all the answers. Because they'd made peace with not having them.

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So here I am, still grieving Halloween before it's over. Still aware that Christmas will come and I'll love it fiercely until I'm sad about losing that too.

But maybe what I'm actually grieving isn't the holidays themselves. Maybe it's the loss of permission. The brief windows when wondering "what if?" feels safe instead of foolish. When saying "I don't know" transforms into excitement rather than inadequacy.

What if those holiday windows aren't exceptions to real life? What if they're reminding us of a capacity we're supposed to have year-round?

I don't have this figured out. I still catch myself sharing things because they feel true rather than checking if they are. I still rush to complete stories about people from partial information. I still grasp for certainty when sitting with mystery feels too uncomfortable.

But I'm trying. I'm catching myself more often. I'm practicing what I always talk about: nurturing my nature, bettering my nature, by learning to distinguish between the vigilance that serves me and the grasping that exhausts me.

The veil between worlds that Halloween celebrates? Maybe it's not just about spirits and loved ones who've passed. Maybe it's also about the thin space between what we think we know and what's actually true. Between our constructed certainties and the mystery we're actually living in.

I'm going to savor what's left of this season. Halloween's wonder, then Christmas magic, then New Year's possibility. These windows when mystery is allowed. And while I have permission, I'm going to practice staying present with not knowing. Building that muscle. Creating something I can tap into later, when January hits and the world demands certainty again.

Because maybe the real gift of these holidays isn't the mystery itself. It's the reminder that we can hold it. That we're capable of wonder. That "I don't know" doesn't have to feel like failure.

What about you?

Where have you been grasping for certainty when maybe mystery would serve you better?