Chapter 144

“We want to sit with doubt. We want to savor it. We want to follow it where it leads. Because on the other side is truth.” Holiday

Not only am I not as smart as many people want to think I am, I am far less certain than ever before, about a great many things. I know less and less about more and more. Know being the operative word. 

But Doubt is an uncomfortable friend. Very unsettling sort of chap. We don’t like doubt, we like certainty. Knowing. Assuredness. Conviction. Certitude. Factualness. Confidence. Conviction that we know something, feels so good. Safe. Sure. 

Certainty though can be a trap, and Doubt can be a road. And most of us need to ride that road much more, no matter how uncomfortable it feels. No one is saying that certainty and confidence are bad, but I am suggesting that we have far too much of them in our lives. All you have to do is read social media to see what I am describing - blazing statements of solid conviction about whatever, and without a shread of evidence or any facts or any experience.  So while convictions and confidence and knowing are all fine and good in measured doses, cultivate your Doubt a great deal more.

Doubt is like the bridge between belief and unbelief. And while it may be uncomfortable, it may be unsettling, it engages your mind and your heart and your soul, into the furnace of wrestling with difficult and thorny problems that the world faces, that you face, and resolving them in better and smarter ways. Here you can discover the truth about a great many things.