The Unknown and The Wisdom of Uncertainty

Have you ever stopped to consider that everything you now know you once did not know? Everything. How to tie your shoes. How to walk. How to speak. Read. Write. Use a computer. All of this, and everything else was once relegated to the realm of The Unknown. If you ask folks what they fear most, near the top of the list is The Unknown. 

When I was getting ready to begin Kindergarten I was fearful of The Unknown of school. What would be expected of me? What if I didn't know something? Was I supposed to know how to read and write? I literally made myself sick worrying about The Unknown of school. 

I was afraid of The Unknown that lurked in the darkness -- ghosts, witches, boogeymen, ferocious animals. I feared The Unknown of practically any new situation in which I found myself, and this caused me no end of anxiousness and nearly psychotic thoughts that I would someday be abandoned by my parents -- literally left by the side of the road -- to fend for myself in The Unknown world. 

I now understand that the The Unknown is the existential fact; everything that will happen in the next moment, the next day, year, and so forth is Unknown. So if this is the state of existence, why do we fear it? Sunlight is an existential fact, as is gravity, the presence of oxygen, and so on, and yet we don't fear these things. Why do we, as Wendell Berry wrote in The Peace of Wild Things "tax ourselves with forethought of grief?" 

One answer might be found in human evolution. The brain may have developed in part to be able to predict future events and therefore keep us safe from impending danger. However, in the earliest days of human thought there may not have been a lot of things to worry about. And those things that were unknown often involved real life-or-death threats, such as the weather, or wild animals, or the folks in the village next door. If you came out of your cave and saw that it was cloudy you could accurately predict a storm was coming. If you heard a bear growling nearby you could predict the danger and get the heck out of there. 

Today, however, there are hundreds or thousands of things that bombard us to get our attention and create a sense of threat. In addition, unlike the clouds or the bear, these modern things bring with them an Unknown that is not as clearly defined and always with uncertain outcomes. We worry and struggle over every choice or decision we make, afraid it will lead to some catastrophe in the Unknown future.

By now you are probably seeing that it's not The Unknown that causes the fear. Rather it is our thoughts about The Unknown that produce the fear. Kindergarten was just Kindergarten, not a threat to my existence the way my imagination portrayed it. The dark is just the dark, not the monsters I imagined resided there. The choices we make are just choices, usually made with best intentions drawing on the best information we have at that moment. Perhaps the choice will come out the way we -- or the world -- thinks it should (success!), or perhaps not (mistake!). 

When every moment of every day is Unknown, why should we fear? It's so unnecessary. I guess we imagine that worrying enough or making the right choices or controlling things always leads to security. It doesn't. What if we could dwell in what Alan Watts called The Wisdom of Insecurity? The more we are able to dwell in the uncertainty -- to steep ourselves in it as often as we can -- the less we are affected by our stories of The Unknown, and the easier it is to take just this one step on our path. And this step, of course, is the only one that is known.

Beyond the Bend in the Road

(Para Além da Curva da Estrada)

by Fernando Pessoa

Beyond the bend in the road
There may be a well, and there may be a castle,
And there may be just more road.
I don’t know and don’t ask.
As long as I’m on the road that’s before the bend
I look only at the road before the bend,
Because the road before the bend is all I can see.
It would do me no good to look anywhere else
Or at what I can’t see.
Let’s pay attention only to where we are.
There’s only enough beauty in being here and not somewhere else.
If there are people beyond the bend in the road,
Let them worry about what’s beyond the bend in the road.
That, for them, is the road.
If we’re to arrive there, when we arrive there we’ll know.
For now we know only that we’re not there.
Here there’s just the road before the bend, and before the bend
There’s the road without any bend.

1914
Fernando Pessoa
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe

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The Wisdom of Uncertainty

(From the Dharma Talk blog archives, originally posted on Friday, November 27, 2009)

There is an old story about a Russian farmer in the late 1800's, who happened to own a horse. As you can imagine, back then if you had a horse you were considered a person of property. A horse could help you work the land, you could rent it out to your neighbors, it was reliable transportation, and so forth. This farmer, therefore, was considered very fortunate.

"How lucky you are to have a horse!" his neighbors would tell him.

"You never know," the farmer would always reply.

One night, a sudden and violent storm blew up, and the frightened horse broke down the fence of the corral and got away.

"How unlucky you are to have lost your horse!" they all said.

"You never know," replied the farmer.

Sure enough, a few days later his horse returned, accompanied by a beautiful wild stallion.

"Two horses! How lucky you are!" everyone told the farmer, who only said, "You never know."

The farmer had a son, which was another good thing to have in those days. Extra hands were always needed to do the chores around the place, and this particular young man was strong and hard-working, so he decided to tame the wild stallion. While doing so, however, he was thrown from the horse and broke his leg.

"Your son broke his leg!" the neighbors lamented. "How terrible!"

"You never know," said the farmer.

Less than a week later, Cossacks swept through the village and neighboring farms, and conscripted every able-bodied young man for service in the army. Since the farmer's son was unable to walk or ride with his broken leg, he was not taken.

And so it goes...

The fact is that we never know what is going to happen next, and we never know what fortune, good or ill, will arise out of any event. Alan Watts coined the phrase "the wisdom of uncertainty" to describe the existential fact that the seeds for our enlightenment rest in the unexpected events of our lives, not in our constant and fruitless search for security.

According to Deepak Chopra:

The search for security and certainty is actually an attachment to the known...The known is nothing other than the prison of past conditioning...Without uncertainty and the unknown, life becomes the stale repetition of outworn memories. You become a victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday.

Today, factor the unexpected into your plans. Experiment with letting life take you where it wants to go, and begin to trust that this path will lead to something new and exciting. By releasing the tight fist of clinging to an imagined outcome, you will find freedom.

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark by Emily Dickinson:

We grow accustomed to the dark -
When light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -

A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darkness -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When not a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.