Uncertainty
“Unknowing” as Opportunity Potential
As people, perhaps we react with fear when we identify the experience of another as so “radically” different from our own experiences because it ultimately makes us look inward and forces us to question the validity and relevance of our own ways of existing in the world. That can be a scary existential threat if we assume that some ways are inherently better or worse than others. Instead of trying to come to conclusions about the existential questions that anomalous uncertainties may elicit, maybe letting go of the need to come to conclusions at all–and just accepting “closure” and “certainty” as illusory concepts in the first place–could help us connect to others, ourselves, and the wonderfully unpredictable world around us. Because, nobody knows (probably), but if we can unconditionally accept our shared potential as human beings: a potential to deliver good ideas, bad ideas, and everything in between, maybe we can co-recover those integral connections that make our ‘being’ relevant. And that is a type of sense making that is priceless.
Who are You? Who am I? And the Problem of Identity Optics
We desperately act in ways that are less and less driven by our real values, and that are increasingly driven by our need to be valued. Maybe that anxious, phrenetic energy undermines our ability to stop, reflect, and think. Maybe the best way that we can do to functionally manage is to seek refuge in the comfort of categorical simplicity and binaries: of dramatic hero-villain narratives.
