The 13th-century Flemish mystic Meister Eckhart had a peculiar term — *Gelassenheit* — that translates roughly as 'releasement' or 'letting-be.' Not passivity, but a specific posture of receptive openness that allows reality to arrive undistorted by your preconceptions. Contemporary psychologist Tania Lombrozo, who studies explanation and understanding at Princeton, has found something structurally similar in her research on curiosity: the deepest learning happens not when people seek to confirm categories they already hold, but when they tolerate the discomfort of genuinely not-knowing long enough for a new pattern to emerge. For leaders and scientists alike, this matters because expertise is a double-edged gift — it speeds recognition but quietly narrows the aperture. The practice Eckhart and Lombrozo together point toward is simple but demanding: when you feel the pull to explain something quickly, pause just long enough to ask whether your explanation is arriving from understanding or from habit.

What is something you consider yourself expert at — and when did you last genuinely discover you were wrong about it?

Drawing from Christian Mysticism synthesized with Cognitive Psychology of Explanation — Meister Eckhart (synthesized with Tania Lombrozo's research on explanation and understanding)