Month: October 2020

Experiencing uncertainty

As I reflect upon the past six months, it feels like a period muddled and unfocused. I am actually unable to distinguish what I did. I can, however, reconnect with the feelings of it all. As I look to the next six months, I am already prepared for a period of fog, where moving through space and time without seeing much warrants slowing down, knowing that where I am going or where I have come from is unclear. I shall keep my eyes open for what emerges from the haze, and mostly feel my way forward.

We may be tempted to pull over and wait for the murkiness to clear. We may also look for the taillights of someone in front of us to follow and make our way along the road. Indeed, most of us prefer to see where we are going and keep steadfast in one direction. Yet there are gifts that come with the fog. Sometimes it takes something like fog to slow us down and think. Involuntary inactivity forces us to see beyond what we may look for, and it may even help us see that the fogginess is coming from within. In reality, we cannot see outside ourselves; the source of insight and light usually lies within.

You can continue to move forward cautiously in the months to come, but you cannot predict when the fog will lift. You can wait for guidance and hope for reliable taillights to follow. But you can also learn to listen for signs, harness your intuition and insights, and distinguish the noise around you from your own voice and clarity within. You will find clarity as you look for your next step, but certainty is becoming increasingly illusive. Let it not stop you. Being clear is all you need. Certainty never lived long anyway.

The new multi dimensional human

I remember the days when in University, studying international relations, we had the luxury to pick a topic on which we could read all there was written on the issue and add something original that had not been considered before.  I have often reflected over the past years how this would be impossible today, given the sheer amount of written publications, the constant influx of scientific studies, and the relentless speed at which new books come out, confounding our well-researched opinion. I have come to dismiss or even ignore new information to simply find the time and space to stabilize my point of view on a particular issue. Yet, I am wondering whether this is the best way forward in our new digital age.

We have learned to process information in a certain way, categorizing, labeling, and developing an argument with enough rigor to demonstrate the validity of our theses. We have come to a reality, which is so complex, volatile, and uncertain that we can strive to be clear in explaining our thought process, but we have long lost the ability to establish the validity of our thought process with any kind of certainty.

You may have read contradictory studies regarding various foods, wondering whether tomatoes are good or bad for you. You can accumulate the data, categorize and label the various theories, but ultimately, you will have to give up establishing the facts with any kind of certainty. You will likely have to decide on the answer depending on the individual and reassess every so often. The key is perhaps to realize that you are not going to finally get to some stable place of having it all figured out. This is humbling.

Finding our way intuitively in the face of massive data, staying open to new information, integrating what works for each and every one of us, stabilizing our worldview at any given point in time, to ultimately ride the next incoming wave of information, intuition, and re-stabilize until the next shift… This full spectrum thinking process may just be the best way forward to develop the multi-dimensional human that we will need to become in the face of massive uncertainty. Let us see this as an opportunity to play, surf on the waves, and enjoy the ride!