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The Known Unknown



“How can you be sure?”

“Well, I am not.”

How can anyone be sure of anything? Is there even a way to be sure of things? Through testing, experimenting, and doing actuarial analysis?

I'm thinking about my own life. All the things I've done. I don't think there was a single moment when I felt completely sure before doing something big. Because isn't life like this? It isn't lived by objective standards. Whatever you decide to do, you do for the first time. There is only one version of you in the entire universe. So there is only one set of circumstances in which everything can be tried.

You know how, in labs, they have test groups? They arrange the optimum conditions and keep everything the same, changing only one variable. That is how you measure whether something is successful or not.

Now imagine how this would apply to one person's life.

I'm thinking about my siblings. We all grew up in the same household. You could say under the similar testing conditions. But we all went in completely different directions. The same is true for the people I went to high school with. Or university. Or my master's. Or my PhD. At any stage, really. Even with such similar academic trajectories, we still ended up doing different things and living different lives. Because maybe life is meant to be like that. Everyone's life is one of a kind, and so are everyone's circumstances, personality and choices.

Back to my original question.

How can anyone be sure of anything when there is literally no prior data for your life? You are the first and the last person to live it. So is there really any way to know beforehand?

I'm definitely not diminishing lived experience. But I think other people's experiences are overrated. I don't think you can truly learn from someone else's experience if they haven't lived your life. That is why their experiences can only help so much.

This is both the beautiful and the scary part about life. No one has ever lived your life before. Read that again. 

I've always believed that you need to leave the herd in order to find yourself. I try to do that most of the time. Sometimes I fail because staying with the herd is easy. It's comfortable. But even within the herd, everyone is still living their own individual life that is unlike anyone else's.

If we can't really be sure of anything, then there is no point in being afraid of the unknown either. So what's the harm in moving forward anyway? We don't know what's going to happen. But isn't that the best part?

I used to think I could plan and manage my entire life. And I thought I had done that up to a certain point. But the more I live, the more I realise that I know nothing. You know nothing, Jon Snow- and that's okay.

If waiting for certainty is irrational, then what am I waiting for?

There is only one life to find out.

 

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