I’m not even sure this week’s newsletter makes sense to me yet.
It feels like I’m trying to describe something I’ve only just begun to see.
Two seemingly unrelated experiences over the last week have become deeply connected in my mind. And I have a feeling they’re pointing towards something important.
Every morning I have a short playlist on Spotify that I listen to after I’ve listened to Jules reading my document. It plays while I go through my daily flexibility and mobility routine and helps me connect with what really matters.
When the playlist finishes, Spotify sometimes keeps going.
Last weekend it played something I’d never heard before.
A piece called The Unspeakable World by Adi Goldstein.
Beautiful music sat quietly underneath the words of Alan Watts.
Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I hear someone say something that feels profoundly true… even though I don’t really understand what they’re saying.
I know they’re pointing towards something.
I just can’t quite see it yet.
This was one of those moments.
In the middle of his talk, Alan Watts quoted Lao Tzu.
“The five colours make a man blind. The five tones make a man deaf.”
Then he explained.
If you force colour into five colours, you’re blind.
If you force sound into five tones, you’re deaf.
The world of colour is infinite.
The world of sound is infinite.
It’s only when we stop forcing reality into our fixed ideas that we begin to really see… and really hear.
I’ve listened to that track over and over again since.
I knew I wasn’t even close to fully understanding it.
How can seeing five colours make you blind?
How can hearing five tones make you deaf?
And yet something in me knew he was pointing towards a deeper truth.
Then, a few days later, I was on a call with my coach Ankush.
Then he said something that stopped me in my tracks.
“Knowing is in the way of not knowing.”
Then he said,
“Peter… your next level of growth is seeing that you don’t know anything at all.”
For a moment it felt as though someone had taken a sleep mask off my eyes.
I was immediately back listening to Alan Watts.
Suddenly something began to make sense.
As long as I think I know…
…I’m blind to everything I don’t know.
As long as I think I know what I’m seeing…
…I’m blind to everything else that could be true.
As long as I think I know what someone means…
…I’m deaf to every other possibility their words might hold.
The more I sat with it, the more I realised something.
I like knowing.
Or at least I like thinking I know.
Knowing feels solid.
Certain.
Safe.
It gives me the feeling that I’ve worked it out.
But what if that’s exactly where the limitation begins?
What if every conclusion I cling to quietly closes the door on a thousand possibilities I haven’t even imagined?
What if my greatest limitation has never been what I don’t know…
…but everything I think I already know?
That thought has stayed with me all week.
I’ve started to notice how quickly I decide I know someone.
Or know a situation.
Or know what’s going to happen next.
Or know what’s possible.
And every time I settle into knowing, I wonder what I’ve just stopped seeing.
I don’t think this is about becoming uncertain.
Or indecisive.
Or pretending knowledge has no value.
I think it’s something much simpler.
It’s about becoming curious again.
About seeing each person, each conversation and each moment with fresh eyes.
Showing up from a place of not knowing.
About allowing life to surprise me.
I haven’t figured this out. I’m not even close.
In fact, I think that’s the point.
For the first time in a long time, I feel less interested in collecting answers…
…and much more interested in discovering everything that’s been there all along.
Much love
Peter