Becoming Plant-like
February 13, 2013
Emerging bulbs
Daring to open to the light
“To be a good human is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertainty, and on a willingness to be exposed. It’s based on being more like a plant than a jewel: something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility.”
– Martha Nussbaum, quoted by Oliver Burkman in The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking
I just read Oliver Burkman’s The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. One of his key premises is that if we can only learn to live with and embrace uncertainty, we will be able to live happier lives. The discomfort caused by uncertainty too often motivates us to cling too tightly to goals (and their implied certainty) and to make decisions simply to have things settled instead of waiting for what’s right or best for us (illusion of control). I think there is something to this idea.
“Uncertainty is where things happen.”
– Erich Fromm
February 15, 2013 at 8:53 pm
Oh, I think there’s a good bit to the importance of embracing uncertainty. The one thing my dear mother never could conquer was her tendency to “what if” everything to death. She couldn’t stand uncertainty, so she spent much time thinking about everything that could go wrong, then trying to solve it in advance!
It was one reason she didn’t sleep well at night – she was thinking too much!
February 16, 2013 at 1:38 pm
I don’t worry excessively, but I do plan things quite meticulously. The planning, for me, is part of the fun and satisfaction. But I suppose the downside is that I might be missing the serendipitous. I wonder if I limit what I am seeing by what I expect to see. And encountering obstacles is hard for me, too. There’s really quite a lot encompassed by the idea of embracing uncertainty, isn’t there?