A few weeks back, my husband and I went away for our anniversary and when we go away, we enjoy long dinner and walks where we have conversations about a variety of topics from our goals to places we would like to see, friends we’d like to meet up with and books/movies we’d like to read/see among other things. One of the things he suggested I do was meet up with our daughter and daughter-in-law every month to ‘check-in.’ It came up because I mentioned that my husband works with our daughter, son & son-in-law and how nice it is that he gets to check-in with them very regularly and not complaining, but mentioning that I don’t have that with the girls; I see them at Church, when I go over to babysit or they bring over the kids, but then they leave and then when they come back to pick up the kids, there a little conversation but then they take off, that’s just the way it is at this time in their very busy lives, raising children-I remember that. My husband recommended that I get together once a month with them not for a long period of time so I thought about it and I invited them to an hour and a half get together after they put the kids to bed from 8 to 930 Tuesday night. We did that this week and it was lots of fun. We talked about a variety of subjects, but one of them mentioned the saying “if you don’t know, then you know,” and I don’t remember the exact reason they brought it up or the context, but I do remember that they said it was a saying that my son likes to quote when it’s pertinent to a situation. The next morning, I looked up the quote and there is actually a few versions of it and it has a few different meanings. It got me thinking…
I recall the time when I was taking post grad classes, and I had a professor in a sociology class, sociology of the family, and the professor described a situation that she had “studied” where as two divorced women lived together with their children after they had developed a romantic relationship. She said that she studied these women who came together in the 80s and although they were romantically involved, they led other others to believe in their neighborhood/the community that they were just two women sharing expenses to get back on their feet after having recently been divorced. The professor describe the situation as they were trying to pass it off to their friends in the community as a ”Kate and Allie” relationship. Kate and Allie was a popular show in the 80s about two women recently divorced who had been longtime friends, since childhood, all these years later finding themselves in the same circumstance, they felt that it would be good for them to rent a place together where they could support one another and share in expenses. Remember, this was the 1980s things were different. There were some things that weren’t as acceptable as they are now one of them being gay relationships. Now, very few people question who loves who and people are very free to live as they wish without question, yet it wasn’t always like this. I had never heard of a situation like this at that time and I did not watch the show and so I asked lots of questions, unaware that the other students in the classroom, all older adults than me, some of whom happened to live in the same community as the professor and knew more about the situation than I did. I was sitting next to another teacher who I had gotten to know through some of the other discussions in group projects, and he lightly kicked my foot under the table. At the time, I really didn’t know what he meant, but I thought that maybe I was going too long and asking questions delaying class. Therefore, I stopped asking questions and the teacher moved on. When class time was over, we usually all walked out together and the teacher who I was sitting next to came up to me along with a couple of other teachers, and informed me that the professor was revealing HER situation and that she was the subject of her own research. I don’t recall exactly how that conversation all wrapped up, but it was, something like “If you don’t know, NOW you know.” Needless to say I didn’t inquire about that case study again.
The saying has a variety of versions and basically what the saying represents is once you have all the information then you know the whole situation, and isn’t that a lot of how life is? Sometimes we make decisions based on not having all the information. Once we have all the information our decision may be different. My mother-in-law has a saying that she has said all the years I have known her, “ it’s fair to change your mind when you have more information.” I like that saying, and it has been something I have thought of when I make decisions. It makes making a decision a lot easier because I know that there are many decisions in life where you can change your mind when you have more information. Think of the choice of deciding on a college we put so much emphasis and sometimes too much pressure on a teenager making that decision or for that matter the field, they hope to go into. It’s a bit of a daunting thought to think that you have to make a decision at age 16 or 17 as to what you will do for the rest of your life and where you will receive the training to do it. We told our kids when they made that decision for college. If you make that decision and we find out into the first year that it was the wrong choice, we’ll make a change. I felt that it took the pressure off of them. Likewise, if someone goes into a field of study and they find once they start working in that area that they don’t like it, it’s always fair to pivot. For example, if someone goes into nursing and they don’t like working in the hospital, maybe they would prefer working as a nursing instructor, as a home care nurse or as a traveling nurse on a cruise ship. There are very few decisions that can’t be changed. “When you know, you know” when you need to make a change (another version of the saying).
Sometimes in relationships, things change. Sometimes our friends change because we’re in a different season of life. I think of the friendships that I have had over the years. Many of them were based on where we lived and on our children’s friends. It’s common to find friendships with other parents who have kids your child’s ages. Sometimes our friends are based on where we live or who we work with. If there are many factors that you have in common with these friends, they may last beyond the job or when the kids grow up and sometimes they don’t and those people then become acquaintances or people we just see once in a while. And that’s OK. Sometimes there are friends that we grow apart from and that that’s OK too because you only have so much time in your life and sometimes as you get older and have different responsibilities, you have less time on your hands to nurture those friendships and that’s OK too, “When you know, you know” and you shouldn’t feel bad, because you only have so much time…
And lastly, there are times in our life when we think we know a situation or a person so well and we see a version of them that we come to love and then something happens or we gain more information and we realize things aren’t as we see them. We may be surprised or disappointed when these things happen. A few of these situations come to mind. In the news I think of the recent findings of the Jeffrey Epstein case. For years, we have been under the impression that there was a list of people involved, people who were powerful and influential. In fact, Epstein‘s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, went to prison over her involvement and we all know the fate of Jeffrey Epstein who was tried convicted and serving time in prison. It was suspected that his knowledge of this list led to his death in prison. However, this week we were told that” there was no there, there.” There was nothing to be seen on this list. Really!? Even the current deputy of the FBI, Dan Bongino, who I was a frequent listener of his former radio program said numerous times, the Significance of Jeffrey Epstein‘s list of clients. I thought to myself after reading many observations about the situation, “when you know, you know” as in, when you observe how they are handling this now, you know or can surmise that there’s possibly something damaging in the information they won’t release. Or maybe not, this is just my observation. I am hoping that there will be more information released at a later time and that people won’t let this go and be swept under the rug. Time will tell…
I also thought of that quote this week and thinking of friends years ago when we were all dating and you think you find the right person and then you find out more information or you find out that they weren’t as into you as you thought. Maybe there was a betrayal. Maybe there was information being hidden and although it can be painful to find these things out “when you know, you know”, as in when you learn this information, you know that this is not a good situation for you and it’s best to move on…
We’ve all seen people from celebrities to the average person be taken advantage of by charlatans of finance. Remember Bernie Madoff and the big Ponzi scheme many very smart and successful people were taking advantage of. We’ve all heard stories of these circumstances. These people charmed their investors, and then take advantage of them, squandering their life savings and retirement. It was a betrayal to these people and I’m sure they felt horrible and possibly, once they started looking back, they could recognize the red flags in hindsight that they didn’t see early on, “when you know, you know,” and that can be very painful.
When you know, you know. And even if it can change the image you had, knowing is so much better than NOT knowing. Better to find out anything bad and not live a lie…THIS can lead to greater days down the road ❤️
