HealthCommentary

Exploring Human Potential

DAILY CHOICE: Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Certainty vs. Uncertainty

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REFLECTION:

There are no perfect decisions because there is always room for doubt. Holding steady to a well thought out decision is a sign of maturity. Life is by nature uncertain. That is the fun and the risk in it. Absolute certainty would be the end of growth, the death of possibility. Leaping in the dark uncovers moments of truth. We are never certain until we choose. The choice certifies itself. If you need certainty, be certain that change will never be far removed, and that life has to do with dealing with it. For that’s the truth whether we like it or not. In the absence of ironclad assurances, we are still called upon each day to act decisively, to make decisions. It was never intended that we should stand protected, idle and content, for very long. That is not the destiny of the free. Rather we are born to think, to contemplate and to decide. Insecurity comes with the territory. 

MUSES:

Soon after a hard decision something inevitably occurs to cast doubt. Holding steady against that doubt usually proves the decision.
R. I. Fitzhenry 

Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.
John Finley 

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next, or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may guess wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Agnes de Mille 

We are not certain, we are never certain.
Albert Camus 

Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope, and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.
John F. Kennedy 

The central problem of our age is how to act decisively in the absence of certainty.
Bertrand Russell 

Certainty generally is illusion and repose is not the destiny of man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 

Free man is by necessity insecure; thinking man is by necessity uncertain.
Erich Fromm

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