There’s something intoxicating about stepping into a room where you are, undeniably, the dumbest person there. Where everyone else is fluent in a language you barely understand, moving to a rhythm you can’t quite catch, or navigating concepts so intricate they might as well be speaking in mathematical hieroglyphs.
I used to fear that feeling—the disorientation of being lost, the vulnerability of being seen struggling, the quiet shame of not knowing. But lately, I’ve been learning to dance with it. Quite literally.
Dancing Through Discomfort
A few weeks ago, I attended my first house dance class. I knew the music, sure. But the dance? No idea. The movements were foreign, intricate, almost counterintuitive to what my body wanted to do. I felt stupid—uncoordinated, clumsy, constantly half a beat behind.
And yet, there was something liberating about it. In between the awkwardness, I found echoes of a mindset I had learned to trust: the fastest way to learn something is to enjoy it. To not shrink away from the moments I feel stupid but to lean into them, stretch them, and let them dissolve into familiarity.
A year ago, I was in the same position when I picked up the piano. I wanted to learn Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, and I brute-forced my way through it. My fingers were stiff, my timing was off, and I had no idea how to use the sustain pedal. It sounded like a mess. But every day, I sat down and played. One hour, every single day, for six months. At some point, I realized I wasn’t just playing notes anymore—I was making music. And after that, learning new pieces felt exponentially easier.
That’s what I reminded myself in that dance class: just get through this part—the part where it sucks. The part where I suck. The part where I want to shrink into the background. Because if I stay long enough, I know it will stop feeling foreign. It always does.
The Art of Not Knowing
That’s become a recurring theme in my life lately—intentionally putting myself in places where I don’t know anything. Recently, I attended a Japanese language exchange meetup. It was held in a small café in Manila, filled with Japanese professionals working on fascinating projects. One of them was an engineer helping build a railway from Laguna to Clark. Another was a businessman with several ventures in Japan.
The first half of the event was in English, so I held my own. But then, the second half switched to Japanese. And I was thrown into the deep end.
I knew enough to understand some parts but nowhere near enough to respond with ease. It would have been easy to feel embarrassed, to mentally retreat and let the conversation wash over me. But instead, I focused on paying attention to what I didn’t know. I let myself stumble through broken sentences, listened harder, took mental notes. And I realized:
Being the dumbest person in the room is not humiliating. It’s thrilling.
It means I am exactly where I need to be.
By the end of the event, I had met a private tutor who could help me improve. I had gaps in my knowledge, sure, but now I could see them clearly. And once you can see a gap, you can start filling it.
Leaning Into the Unknown
It’s not just dance. Or piano. Or Japanese. Lately, I’ve been listening to scientists talk about space-time and consciousness—about how our perception of time affects our experience of life. I hear them throw around terms like polytopes and quantum states, and half the time, I have no idea what they mean.
But I listen anyway.
Because I know this feeling now.
It’s the same feeling I had when I first sat in front of a piano, fingers hesitant on the keys. The same feeling I had when I walked into that dance studio. When I switched to Japanese mid-conversation.
And I know now that the trick is to stay.
To resist the urge to retreat.
To enjoy the discomfort.
To let it stretch me.
Because every time I’ve done that, I’ve come out the other side fluent in something new.