The vet who said she did not know

A family in Kuwait City takes an old cat to two vets in the same week.

The first examines her for three minutes and gives a diagnosis with complete assurance. He prescribes something, the family pays, the cat gets no better.

The second examines her for longer and then says something the family did not expect. She does not know yet. It could be one of three things. Here is the test that will tell them which, and here is what she would do in the meantime.

The family trusts the second vet more, and they are right to.

Most of what matters, especially about what happens next, cannot be known in the moment. Whether the cat recovers, whether a new product finds buyers, whether a move to another city works out. Not knowing is the ordinary state of things. That part is settled.

What is not settled is whether we say so. Admitting it feels like weakness, so people cover it with a confident guess. Sometimes the guess is right. When it is wrong, it costs far more than it was worth, because now everyone who believed it has to wonder what else was guessed.

The person who can say she does not know, plainly, and then say what she will do about it, is showing the opposite of weakness. She is secure enough to describe the situation as it is, and she understands it well enough to see where her understanding stops.

That is rarer than it should be. When you find someone who leads like that, it is worth going out of your way to keep them close.