‘Um. The atomic symbol for confusion.’
Confusion Comes Before Clarity
“The best way out is always through.” (Robert Frost)
There is a little meme going around, the periodic table element Um, the atomic symbol for confusion. It made me smile, because we have all stood in that exact spot. That foggy, stuck place where the honest answer to “what do you think?” or “what do you feel?” is just a long, drawn-out ‘um.’
And most of us treat confusion as a dead end. A sign we have failed, or that something is wrong with us. I would love to offer you a kinder way to see it. Wherever there is confusion, the next part is clarity. The fog is not the end of the road. It is the step right before the clearing.
The Confusion Fog
In my book I describe a place at the very core of ‘The Tip’ that I call the Confusion Fog. It is that mental haze where finding clarity feels impossible, where the thoughts swirl and nothing quite lands. Every one of us knows it. It rolls in when a decision feels too big, when our feelings are tangled, when life stops making the sense it used to.
The fog itself is not the problem. The problem is what we believe about it. We think the fog means we are broken or lost for good. It does not. Fog is just the weather of the mind passing through, and like all weather, it moves.
Why Confusion Comes First
Here is the part worth really taking in. You only ever feel confused when your old way of understanding something no longer fits. That is actually a sign of growth, not failure. The confusion is the gap between the map you used to use and the truer one that is still forming. Of course, it feels foggy in that gap. You have outgrown the old picture, and the new one has not finished arriving yet.
Confusion is not the opposite of clarity. It is clarity in its earliest stage, still getting dressed. Nobody arrives at a deeper, clearer understanding without passing through a stretch of not-knowing first. The fog always comes before the clearing. Always.
The Way Out Is Through
The mistake we so easily make is to run from the fog. We numb it, we scroll past it, we bury ourselves in being busy, we reach for anything that lets us avoid sitting in the discomfort of not knowing. And as I remind people in the book, no matter where you run, you will always find yourself waiting for you at the end. The confusion you avoid today is simply there again tomorrow.
As Robert Frost put it, the best way out is always through. You do not get to clarity by going around the confusion. You get there by walking through it, gently, honestly, one step at a time. That means becoming the observer of what is swirling in you, rather than being lost inside it. The moment you stop running and start looking, the fog begins to lift.
From the Fog to the Clearing
This is really the whole journey of my book, right there in its subtitle, navigating the paths between chaos and clarity. The Confusion Fog belongs to ‘The Tip.’ Clarity is the air of ‘The Garden.’ And the path between them is not a leap, it is a walk. Every honest question you ask yourself in the fog is a step along it.
And please hear this with no judgement at all. We all get lost in the fog sometimes. Feeling confused does not make you weak or lost or less than. It makes you human, and more often than not, it means you are right on the edge of understanding something you could not see before.
A Question to Sit With
The next time the fog rolls in and the best you can manage is ‘um,’ try not to panic, and try not to run. Get still instead, and gently ask yourself:
‘What am I confused about right now that might simply be clarity on its way?’
Wherever there is confusion, clarity is the next part of the path. Keep walking through, and it will meet you on the other side.
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? → Get the book