The Grace of “Perhaps”

One of my favorite conversations with my mom happens almost without fail whenever we’re driving together. Driving alone holds a different kind of stillness too — one I found unexpectedly in The Quiet Places That Still Hold Us Awake.

She’ll notice something—a building, a person, a custom, a scene on television,
and almost immediately she’ll recognize a familiar pattern.

“It reminds me of…”

Then she’ll tell a story from life in India. Most of the time, she’s not wrong.
In fact, one of the things I admire most about her is how much of life she carries with her.

The present is always in conversation with her past.

As I listened over the years, I realized something. I used to do exactly the same thing.

I believed wisdom meant recognizing patterns.

The more experiences I accumulated, the more quickly I could explain what I was seeing,
by connecting it to something I had already known.

That habit served me well.

Professionally, pattern recognition became one of my greatest strengths.

Whether in finance, organizations, or relationships, I could often recognize what others overlooked.
Years of experience allowed me to connect dots, anticipate outcomes,
and see systems beneath the surface.

Experience teaches us to recognize patterns.

It has to.
That is how we learn.

But somewhere along the way, I began to notice something else.

Recognition is not the same as understanding.

Just because something resembles what I have seen before does not mean it is the same thing.

Sometimes a familiar pattern is exactly what I think it is.
Sometimes it is something entirely new wearing familiar clothes.

That realization changed the way I moved through the world.

Years ago, I quietly adopted a practice.

Whenever I found myself deeply convinced of an idea—especially one I felt passionate about,
I would intentionally end the thought with two simple words.

…or not.

Not because I believed every idea was equally true.
Nor because conviction lacked value.
But because I had learned how easily conviction becomes possession.

Those two words became a discipline of humility.

They reminded me that reality is always larger than my understanding of it. They created just enough space for me to be surprised, corrected, refined, or deepened by what I had not yet seen.

Looking back, I wonder if another word quietly grew out of that same practice.

Perhaps.

I never consciously decided to use it. Yet when I read back through my essays, conversations, and reflections, it appears again and again.

The etymology surprised me.

Perhaps comes from an older expression meaning “by chance.”

Its roots are per (“through”) and hap (“chance,” “fortune,” “what befalls”). Before it became a marker of uncertainty, it described an openness to what arrives rather than what is controlled.

That feels strangely familiar.

We often hear perhaps as uncertainty. I have come to hear it as hospitality.

Hospitality toward reality.
Hospitality toward another person’s perspective.
Hospitality toward the possibility that truth is larger than my present understanding of it.

The older I become, the more I realize that memory is both a gift and a danger.

Everything we experience forms us.

Eventually, those experiences become lenses through which we interpret the world.

We rarely see only what is before us.
We also see everything it reminds us of.

Sometimes those memories help us recognize wisdom.
Sometimes they keep us from seeing what is actually there.

Perhaps is the small space between memory and reality.

It is the pause that quietly asks,

“What if this is more than what it reminds me of?”

That single word has become one of my ways of resisting the temptation to confuse recognition with revelation.

Many of my reflections begin with perhaps because I am not trying to corner reality.
I am trying to make room for it.

There is a subtle difference.

Arguments seek agreement.

Questions seek understanding.

Perhaps seeks recognition.

Not recognition of my ideas, but recognition of something already present,
that another person may suddenly see for themselves.

Formation rarely happens because someone wins an argument.

More often, it begins when something quietly resonates.

Perhaps…

That word becomes less a conclusion than an invitation.

“Walk with me for a moment.

See if this holds.”

In a culture that rewards certainty, perhaps can sound weak.

We celebrate confidence.
We reward decisive answers.
We mistake certainty for wisdom.

Yet some of life’s deepest realities refuse to be possessed.

Love.
Grace.
Forgiveness.
Calling.
Communion.
Wisdom.

None of them can be forced. They can only be received.

There is an irony here. The older I become, the more convictions I seem to carry.
And yet, the less need I feel to defend them.

Not because they matter less.
But because I trust that what is true does not depend upon my ability to compel agreement.

Truth has a patience of its own.

Perhaps that is why the word continues to find me.

Not because I doubt truth. But because I have learned to doubt my temptation to mistake my understanding of truth for truth itself.

Perhaps the word has been shaping me all along.
Or perhaps it has simply been teaching me the posture I hope to carry through life.

To hold every insight with gratitude.
Every conviction with humility.
Every person with curiosity.
And every moment with one quiet, enduring invitation.

Perhaps.

Or not.