The day I knew that I did not know (knowing my own ignorance, firsthand)

The first thing I did with my hands was nothing grand.

Looking again at what I put on my skin. Only that.

Every day, as if it were settled, I put things on and washed them off. And yet I did not know what on earth I was putting on my face.

There is a big box called “cosmetics.”

Open it, and there is makeup, and basic skincare. Open those, and there is foundation, lip color, toner, cream. It keeps dividing, finer and finer.

And yet I did not know a single thing about what was inside. Even though I put it on my face every day.

When I think about it, that is a lot of trust. The face using it is mine.

Medicine was the same.

First, I looked into steroids as thoroughly as I could.

Then, the cosmetics I was using myself.

Technical terms stood in rows, and at first I could not make sense of any of it.

A little, and then a little more. It took time, too. It really did.

As I kept looking things up, it gradually became clear.

How much I had not known.

Had I really been leaving my own body this much in other people’s hands?

There was fear. There was regret. What had I been doing all this time?

But that is where I noticed.

That I had come to know that I did not know.

That, in itself, was the beginning.

That said, standing there going “oh, I see” and being impressed does not get you anywhere.

“Fine, so what now. What is actually good, then?”

Talking back to myself like that, I started to move.

From here, it was long. It was so long.

There is a problem. I stop. I search. But there is no answer. I put together a loose hypothesis and try it. Then, failure. It does not suit me.

Finding what suits you is its own piece of hard work. It comes in stages, you see. Stages.

Nobody teaches you the correct answer. You try one thing at a time, and check. This was no longer a search for the answer. It was an experiment. A laboratory.

(The way I read an ingredient list now, the way I look not at the name but at what a thing is made of ―― all of it starts here.)

There was one strange thing.

At first, I thought I had started all on my own.

But when I look back, the seeds had been sown long before.

The words of a professor I met at a place where I worked.

A small worry a friend happened to let slip.

A passage from a book I read long ago.

Pieces of experience and knowledge that had been lying scattered.

The moment I set up a single question, they all gave off light at once and gathered inside my head.

That is how it felt.

I think I had probably had similar experiences before.

But this time. Not only as words but as something felt, clearly, I experienced what “knowing that I do not know” means.

Not blaming the self that does not know, and not looking away from it either. Taking it on as it is. And then trying to know.

That courage, and that stance, I learned with my body.

I grew, just a little.

(―― I will keep writing what came after.)