A couple of weeks ago, I had to take the Dolphin (my beloved car) in to be serviced. The engine was running extra-hot, and when I popped the hood, I noticed that the car was completely out of coolant. There was a leak that I couldn’t identify. And so, I entrusted my keys and my Sonata to a stranger at a local auto shop.

The stress kicked in immediately. I was on edge. It took me a bit of time to realize what the source of my anxiety was, but soon, it became clear that I was worried about my car, and it was having a significant effect on me.

From a strictly objective standpoint, I had nothing to fret over. My wife and I own two cars, and we carpool to work, so we rarely need a second vehicle anyway. The Dolphin is over ten years old, and with over 200,000 miles, it’s definitely given my money’s worth. And it’s not like the thing blew up; it just had a leak. What was the big deal?

It’s easy to think that way in hindsight, but at the time and from my point of view, the situation was much more dire. This car that I had owned for as long as I could drive and that had gotten me everywhere I’d ever needed to go had suddenly stopped working. I couldn’t do anything to fix it, and there was no promise that it would be fixed at all. What if this was the end?

The reality of owning a car in the shape mine’s in is that it’s always one bad problem away from becoming scrap metal. I’m not about to drop half the Sonata’s value into fixing it in hopes that it’ll keep running for a few more years. Katherine and I already have a deal that when the car starts going downhill, we’re not going to spend tons of money fighting it. We’re going to let it drift off peacefully and move on.

Again, this is much easier said out of context. When bidding goodbye to the Dolphin felt like a real possibility, the thought of it was enough to bring me to tears.

The real cause of my stress was not knowing what was going to happen. Was it a simple, inexpensive fix? Would we have to dip into savings? Would I ever see my car again? Or was this the end of the road for the trusty Dolphin? I had no idea how the situation was going to turn out, and that not knowing really got to me.

Human beings have very little tolerance for ambiguity, mystery, and uncertainty. We want to know, we want to know everything, and we want to know it right now. And if someone won’t tell us what we want to hear, we’ll just make it up. That’s how we are. We like to be in the know.

Not knowing something is a recognition of one’s limitations. It puts us in a vulnerable state. And it prevents us from being able to feel in control of what’s happening around us. We don’t like that. Being a control freak, I especially don’t like that.

And so we do everything we can to avoid situations where we don’t know what’s going on. We look up every single question that pops into our minds on Google. We ruminate on things over and over until we think we’ve figured them out. And as I mentioned before, if all else fails, we’ll just make something up. Because to us, any information—even bad information—is better than not knowing.

I haven’t seen the film Dirty Harry, so I have no idea if it’s worth checking out or even worth referencing, but I am familiar with the line, “I gots to know!” I’m sure you are, too. If you don’t know the line, I’m sure you at least understand the sentiment.

It’s the way we go about the world, spinning our minds in circles, frantically flipping through pages, looking for answers around every corner until we practically grab life by the shoulders and scream, “I gots to know!”

But not knowing is a part of life, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either a narcissist or extremely out of touch. There are some thing we have to wait to know, and that can be good for us. It teaches us patience and humility, sometimes even persistence. There are other things we may never know, and that’s just something we have to accept.

We can’t know everything. And if we’re constantly thrown off by the things we don’t know, then we’re never going to find stable ground. There will always be something we wish we knew that we just don’t, and we have to learn to live with that. It’s how we were made, and we can’t have it any other way.

Personally, I’m working on turning the stress of not knowing into something positive. Maybe it’s an opportunity to engage my curiosity and learn something new. Or maybe it’s a sign that I need to redirect my attention to something that is within my control. Not knowing can be the door to something better, and that’s what I’m looking for right now.

In case you’re wondering, my car is fine. It was a minor repair that took less than a day, proving all my fears unjustified. Who could have predicted that?

Of course, there are times when the things we don’t know are much more consequential. When this post publishes, I’ll be in a hospital lobby waiting to hear news about my four-year-old nephew’s heart surgery. In cases like this, the only positive thing not knowing can lead us to is hope, and I know that’s what my family will be doing: believing the best outcome is the one that’s coming.

More often than not, that’s the case with all of life. We get stressed and upset about the things we aren’t sure of, and then they just sort of take care of themselves. If you’re worried about something, big or small, that you don’t know right now, I encourage you to hope for the best. Not knowing isn’t the worst thing; actually, it gives you the freedom to believe that the best thing is right around the corner. And I’d consider that a gift rather than a burden.

Thanks for reading, friends. Let’s talk again soon.