I Don’t Know Yet
We seem to have become very uncomfortable with not knowing who people are.
We want to know quickly.
Are they genuine?
Can they be trusted?
Are they good for us?
Will they disappoint us?
Should we let them closer?
We watch.
We interpret.
We collect evidence.
A strange look becomes a sign.
A delayed response becomes information.
One inconsistency becomes a pattern.
One beautiful quality becomes a character assessment.
And before we have really had the chance to know someone, we have often already decided who they are.
Perhaps it gives us a sense of control.
Because uncertainty is uncomfortable.
If we can figure someone out early enough, perhaps we can protect ourselves from what they might eventually reveal.
But people are rarely that simple.
Someone can be generous and still be selfish sometimes.
Someone can be loving and still hurt you.
Someone can be trustworthy and still make a terrible decision.
Someone can disappoint you without being a terrible person.
Someone can have beautiful intentions and still cause harm.
Someone can change.
Someone can grow.
Someone can fail and become different because of it.
Human beings are not photographs.
They are moving.
And perhaps one of the strangest things we do to one another is freeze people in place long before we have seen enough of their lives to know who they are becoming.
We turn moments into identities.
A mistake becomes who they are.
A strength becomes who they are.
A difficult season becomes who they are.
Even our own first impressions become difficult to surrender once we’ve built a story around them.
But what if we allowed people to remain unfinished in our minds?
What if we could say:
I don’t know yet.
I don’t know whether this person will remain in my life.
I don’t know how they will respond when things become difficult.
I don’t know what they will learn.
I don’t know what they will become.
And perhaps that’s not a problem to solve.
Perhaps that’s simply what it means to know another human being.
We don’t need to trust everyone immediately.
But we also don’t need to distrust everyone immediately.
There is a space between the two.
A space where we pay attention without constantly searching for evidence.
Where we allow patterns to emerge instead of demanding conclusions from fragments.
Where we can be curious without becoming suspicious.
Where we can change our minds when new information appears.
Because maybe discernment isn’t about knowing people quickly.
Maybe it is about being willing to keep seeing them clearly.
And perhaps that requires something we don’t talk about enough:
the humility to admit that our first interpretation may not be the whole story.
We may have been wrong about someone.
We may have been right for reasons we didn’t understand yet.
Someone we admired may disappoint us.
Someone we overlooked may surprise us.
Someone we thought we knew may grow into someone different.
And sometimes, we may do the same.
Maybe we don’t need to have everyone figured out.
Maybe we don’t even need to have ourselves figured out.
There are parts of us that only become visible with time.
There are things we only understand after living through them.
There are versions of ourselves we haven’t met yet.
So perhaps we can offer other people the same room.
Room to reveal.
Room to change.
Room to contradict our first impression.
Room to become.
Not because everyone is trustworthy.
Not because everyone deserves access.
But because a human being is more than the evidence we have collected so far.
Sometimes the most honest thing we can say about another person is also the simplest:
I don’t know yet.
And perhaps that’s not uncertainty to be afraid of.
Perhaps it’s room for reality to unfold.
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