Say what you don’t know

One day, I was at a restaurant with friends. Now, my friends knew—particularly one of my friends—that I don’t eat pork. It’s not a religious thing. I just get sick from pork, even the tiniest bit will give me a headache, and sometimes nausea. So no matter how good that bacon looks, or how much my mouth waters about pork chops frying in the pan, I stay away from pig.

So we’re at the restaurant. I’ve looked at the menu. And the waiter comes over and rattles off the specials of the evening to us. The tortellini sounded pretty tasty. I knew he had used another word to describe the tortellini—prosciutto—but I skimmed over the word. The whole dish sounded interesting to me.

We sit and have small talk. Then, the meal comes. The waiter puts my dish down in front of me. I pick up my fork and begin eating.

“Do you know what prosciutto is?” my friend asked.

“Yes,” I said lying.

“Point to the prosciutto,” he said.

I picked out a vegetable that kind of looked like celery and stabbed at it with my fork. “There,” I said, “that’s it.”

“You’re kidding around now, aren’t you?” he said. “Point to the prosciutto!”

I felt my face redden. “I don’t like being tested this way,” I said. “I know what prosciutto is.”

“This,” he said, stabbing a piece of something on the plate, “is prosciutto. It’s ham. Italian ham. I just thought you’d like to know, being as you don’t eat pork.”

“Oh,” I said, pushing my plate back. “I don’t think I’m that hungry after all.”

I know. This is an old lesson I’ve talked about before. I had to learn it again. Sometimes, we feel inadequate, but what we don’t know can hurt us. And besides, if we say we don’t know when that’s the honest answer, we just might learn something new.

Today, if the true and correct answer is “I don’t know,” that’s the reply I’ll use.

God, help me let go of my belief that I have to know something I don’t.

From the book: More Language of Letting Go

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