Chapter One
The Man Who Knows
For years, I was introduced with four words:
“The Man Who Knows.”
It was a hell of an introduction.
And an even more interesting way to make a living.
I would walk onto a stage and tell complete strangers things I had no reasonable way of knowing.
Names.
Places.
Words they were thinking.
Decisions they had made.
Things they hadn't told anyone in the room.
Sometimes I knew.
Sometimes I appeared to know.
And sometimes - and this is where things get interesting - I didn't know exactly how I knew.
I've spent most of my adult life working in that peculiar territory between what we know, what we think we know, and what we cannot possibly know.
For more than fifty years, I've studied people.
I've watched them.
Listened to them.
Talked with them.
Performed for them.
I've watched people become absolutely certain about things that turned out not to be true.
I've also watched myself do exactly the same thing.
That last part took considerably longer to notice.
My dear friend John Rose introduced me years ago to a wonderful expression:
A blinding glimpse of the obvious.
You'll encounter it more than once in this book.
I've had quite a few of them.
One of the biggest was realizing that I had spent a lifetime becoming very good at knowing things.
But nobody had taught me what to do with the things I didn't know.
More importantly, nobody had taught me what to do with the things I was certain I knew - but didn't.
We say it all the time.
I know what happened.
I know why she said that.
I know what he meant.
I know what they're thinking.
I know how this will turn out.
I know what kind of person he is.
Maybe.
That one word can save us a great deal of trouble.
Fifty Years of Being Wrong
Experience is valuable.
After you've done something long enough, you begin to recognize patterns.
You notice things other people may not notice.
You develop instincts.
Some of them are remarkably good.
But there is a danger hidden inside experience.
Eventually, we can begin believing not merely in the patterns.
We begin believing in ourselves.
Experience becomes familiarity.
Familiarity becomes confidence.
Confidence becomes certainty.
And certainty has a wonderful way of making us stop looking.
Experience is wonderful.
Experience can also be a very convincing liar.
People often ask me whether I can read minds.
The safest answer is:
Sometimes I have enough trouble reading my own.
Being good at reading other people doesn't necessarily mean you're good at reading yourself.
That's another one of those blinding glimpses.
Someone doesn't return your call.
That's an observation.
“They're avoiding me.”
That's an interpretation.
Someone looks away while you're speaking.
Observation.
“They don't respect me.”
Interpretation.
Someone gives you a short answer.
Observation.
“They're angry with me.”
Interpretation.
Or maybe they're tired.
Maybe they're distracted.
Maybe they're worried about something you know nothing about.
Maybe they have indigestion.
We think we're responding to what happened.
Very often, we're responding to the story we told ourselves about what happened.
And once we become certain about the story, we stop noticing that it was ever a story at all.
The Most Difficult Person I've Ever Read
After more than fifty years of reading people, I can tell you without hesitation who the most difficult person I've ever had to read is.
Me.
Not even close.
We don't see the world exactly as it is.
We see the world, and then almost instantaneously we add ourselves to it.
Our history.
Our expectations.
Our fears.
Our hopes.
Our wounds.
Our preferences.
Our ego.
Then we forget we added anything.
We simply call it reality.
Life has been kind enough to point this out to me on numerous occasions.
Failure was particularly enthusiastic about showing me.
There are moments when what we know is useful.
There are moments when what we know saves us.
And there are moments when the most intelligent thing available to us begins with three words:
I don't know.
That isn't giving up.
It isn't indifference.
It isn't nihilism.
It is simply an honest recognition that there are limits to what I know.
I've made a career out of creating moments of uncertainty for other people.
Perhaps it was inevitable that eventually I would have to become comfortable with my own.
Knowing isn't the problem.
The problem begins when knowing hardens into certainty.
Certainty closes something.
It makes us stop looking.
Stop asking.
Stop listening.
And sometimes life has to get our attention before we realize we've stopped.
Mine arrived late one night.
At a diner.
Over a cup of coffee.
And through the words of a man who had been dead for more than two thousand years.
His name was Socrates.
And apparently, he didn't know very much either.
