Making Peace with Uncertainty

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.” … “And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.” ~Socrates

“Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous” ~ Voltaire

What would you be if you knew everything? You wouldn’t be curious. You wouldn’t have any desire to seek, learn, explore, or create. You’d be bored and mirror a robot.

Living in a state of radical uncertainty is at the heart of being human, it has spawned world religions and the scientific enterprise combined.

There is a beauty and majestic awesomeness one feels when staring up at the night sky and pondering infinity and what appears to be uncontained outer space. This sends a shiver up our spine and causes feelings of the numinous. This grand Mystery of Existence, the All, is what it is because we don’t know everything, because with our mammalian minds we probably can’t know nor fully comprehend the massive mystery of Ultimate Reality.

This is to be embraced not feared or denied for silly superstitions and manmade imaginary idols. The vastness is vast because we can’t see beyond the horizon. The depths have depth because we can’t see the bottom. The heavens are heavenly because they are up above beyond our reach where birds soar and clouds gather as rocketships shoot past the firmament. The Grand Canyon is grand because we can’t reduce it to a crack in the sidewalk. The word eternity carries with it that poetic sense of incomprehensibility because it is beyond our sense of time and space.

Uncertainty is what gives life its wonder and beauty, its unpredictability and spontaneity. The excitement of taking a chance on love, the risk of throwing the dice of luck in all walks of life, from talking to one more client to talking to someone new; uncertainty is the spice of life.

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