Now is incomplete
To live in the moment, we must be willing to live with uncertainty.
The challenge we have with staying in the 'now' is our need to complete that which is incomplete. As I've written about previously, there is a tension that exists between the complete & incomplete.
The now is uncertain, but we crave certainty. Completion is the only thing that's certain. Completion is the end of the tension between the certain and the uncertain.
It's swimming across a pool when we where young. In the middle, there's a real sense of uncertainty that is expressed in fear.
Depending on the event, the space between the start and finish can be filled with tension.
The level of stress my life is a direct reflection of the number of unfinished projects. I am in the gap between unfinished and finished and there's a level of tension. I'm in the middle of the pool, and all eyes are on me.
Tension is ...
Because we need completion, we create stories to link our past to the present. It's the brain's need to complete the story. To explain what happened then by what's happening now, even though the two are very much not connected. This is further confused by the dimension of time and space we base our entire reality on. If you zoom out far enough, the distance between the beginning of your life and the end of your life is seen as a single point. When people experience their entire life flashing before their eyes, they are zooming out.
On the 27th straight day of filming “Forrest Gump,” Tom Hanks was tired & worried.
During a scene on the famous park bench, Hanks stopped & said to director Bob Zemeckis,
“Hey, Bob…is anybody going to care about this movie? I don’t think anybody’s going to care.”
Bob replied,
“It’s a minefield, Tom. You never know what’s good…It’s a minefield! It’s a goddam minefield! We may be sowing the seeds of our own destruction.”
Tom Hanks told this story after he was asked, “When I ask for a memory from your career, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
He said that what Zemeckis said was true of every movie he’s worked on:
“There’s never any guarantee...You do not know if it is going to work out.”
Hanks is the 5th-most highest-grossing actor of all time.
And yet, the stickiest memory of his career is the feeling of uncertainty.
Rarer than talent or work ethic, the poet John Keats wrote, is the ability to step into and push through doubts and uncertainties.
In 1817, Keats wrote a letter to his brothers to share this exciting realization.
“At once it struck me,” Keats wrote, “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement … Negative Capability.”
Keats explains that “Negative Capability” is “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
Those who possess Negative Capability, who can sit with uncertainty, who can spend months or years in the minefield that is working on something while knowing that there is a real possibility no one will care about it—they often possess another quality.
They do what they do, not as a means to some end (money, fame, awards, etc.), but for the sake of doing it.
When asked about one of his movies that commercially failed, Hanks said,
"I loved making that movie. I loved writing it, I loved being with it. I love all the people in it."
As Ryan Holiday once told me, "The work has to be the win."
You control the effort, he says, not the results.
"So ultimately, you have to love doing it. You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”
Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing by Jamie Holmes:
Explores the concept of uncertainty and how embracing it can lead to better decision-making and innovation. The book delves into various real-life scenarios and examples where uncertainty plays a significant role, such as in science, business, and everyday life. Holmes argues that our discomfort with ambiguity often leads to poor decisions and that learning to tolerate and even harness uncertainty can lead to more creative problem-solving and adaptability. The book encourages readers to rethink their attitudes towards not knowing and provides insights into how embracing ambiguity can be a powerful tool for personal and professional growth.
Ambiguity itself is not bad, and can add humor and intrigue to life. Many jokes play with our expectations, and we enjoy the unexpected punchlines. Absolute certainty about everything would be boring. We should seek balance between order and surprise for a rich life. Overall, the book encourages being at peace with some uncertainty, leveraging it for imagination and creativity, while avoiding the pitfalls of groundless conspiracy theories rooted in fear. Managing our relationship with ambiguity is key to both mental health and wisdom.