Sheer Ignorance

Orson Welles was once asked what made Citizen Kane work. He said, in essence, that he did it because he didn't know it was impossible. Sheer ignorance, as he put it. His cinematographer, one of the most accomplished of his era, had told him everything he needed to know about the camera could be taught in half a day. Welles said he was right.

That is part of the real gift of not knowing. It keeps you present. Attentive. Open to what the moment is actually asking.

The Piscataqua River, near where I live, is in full flow. No log jams. Just the steady pull toward open ocean. A time to read the current, not simply be carried by it.

The need to embrace and understand complexity has never been more real. Meanwhile, the human instinct to deflect complexity and reach for what worked in the past is more than understandable.

But certainty borrowed from the past is not the same as clarity earned in the present.

I have spent years working alongside leaders and entrepreneurs, learning from such moments. Not through a program or a prescription. Through a willingness to sit with a question long enough to hear what it is actually asking.

Perhaps the future emerges from that perpetual unknown more often than we think.