Our Insatiable Appetite for Certainty
A New Year of Notebooks continues
We begin a new year of "The Notebooks of James Hazelwood." The title comes from a collection of journal entries by the late Reinhold Niebuhr, titled Leaves from the Notebooks of a Tamed Cynic. That book contains Niebuhr's musings on serving a congregation in Detroit from 1915-1928. My "Notebooks" feature semi-refined musings on spirituality, mythology, poetry and depth psychology. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I think I'm thinking aloud with you about our everyday struggles to find a new symbolic life that helps answer the question, "What's the meaning in all this?" I'm grateful for all the feedback and plan to continue these essays twice a month. The newsletter continues to be free. However, pledges of support keep the website and podcast going. I’m also open to feedback, suggested topics and questions, answers or guesses.
Still in One Peace,
James Hazelwood
Our Insatiable Appetite for Certainty
What is it about us humans and our obsession with certainty? We seem hardwired to seek control and predictability, forever trying to minimize life's inherent messiness. I suppose it stems from good intentions - no one enjoys anxiety and stress. But our strategies aimed at nailing down guarantees often backfire. The more we try to orchestrate outcomes, the more out-of-reach certainty becomes. Humans tend to feel happier when we can control our environment. In studies of work environments, employee job satisfaction often correlates with the amount of control employees have over their work. As children, we long for the day when we can do whatever we want.
In my book, Weird Wisdom for the Second Half of Life, I tell the story of a former colleague in ministry. He and I served together at a congregation in Rhode Island for many years; he was a retired Methodist minister with a gentle spirit, curious mind, and a delightfully subtle sense of humor. In his 80s, he confided to me one day in his office, "You know, I thought when I got older, all these questions of life and faith would get clearer, and the answers would reveal themselves. But that's not what's happening. Instead, the questions get larger and the answers more varied and even illusive."
“Learning to live with ambiguity is learning to live with how life really is, full of complexities and strange surprises..:”
― James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life
If you can get beyond the superficiality of many conversations with older people, they tend to agree with my colleague and Dr. Hollis. Our pursuit of certainty looks both absurd and, well, cute. As we move through life, we discover that the certainty we've been pursuing isn't there.
At the beginning of the new year, I saw numerous articles with predictions for 2024. The topics ranged from stock market levels to sporting achievements, fashion trends, and religious practices. I realized they all had a thread running through the narrative. People attempting to manage their anxiousness regarding a world that seems less hospitable, more violent, and somewhat unstable. To survive this anxiety, we seek clarity, certainty, and direction. The ego functions best when it's in charge, whether it is or not. Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist, suggests that we view the neocortex (the part of the brain associated with higher-order brain functions) as a presidential press secretary whose job it is to defend and justify whatever the president (the amygdala, with its intense emotions and cravings) does and says. In other words, our brains are wired for certainty, looking into the past or the future.
In a study from the 1950s, psychologist Leon Festinger analyzed a small religious cult that had predicted the end of the world. When the apocalypse failed to arrive on time, a normal reaction might have been for the cult members to change their belief in their ability to foresee it. However, the believers doubled down instead of readjusting in the face of the evidence, claiming that their faith had postponed the world's demise. When faced with the discomfort of hard evidence, our minds often make up another story to protect our cherished beliefs.
Yet, life is not certain. Life is not predictable. Life is not surefire.
The wisdom traditions of Buddhism and Stoicism have long grappled with the human relationship to certainty. These philosophical approaches appreciate impermanence and unpredictability as inherent to our world. Rather than endlessly struggling against the current, they advise focusing attention inward. As the Buddha taught, suffering arises from attachment to changing phenomena. By mastering the mind's tendencies, we gain access to a reservoir of inner calm, undisturbed by external storms.
The Stoics similarly emphasized developing equanimity despite circumstances beyond one's control. "It's not what happens to you, but how you react that matters," Epictetus supposedly remarked. The dichotomy of control reminds us to channel energy only into response-ability - those choices directly within our power. Going with the flow rather than resisting allows life's uncertainties to wash over us gracefully.
And then we have words from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus of Nazareth articulates some ancient future wisdom for all of us:
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? Matthew 6:26-27
A 20th-century version of this comes from Rev. Niebuhr, the original author of the Serenity prayer, now adopted by many in Alcoholics Anonymous. Clearly, this prayer has applications across the board.
God grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the Wisdom to know the difference.
As one who has valued my agency in life, I'm learning to live with ambiguity. This is a challenge as a firstborn male six feet seven inches tall. I'm used to claiming and getting what my ego thinks I want and need. But life is increasingly out of my control. I can't make it do what I want it to do. Then, all these people around me have their ideas of how something should unfold. I experience this from the petty activities of waiting in line at a grocery store to the more significant events surrounding health and life.
A few weeks ago, I came across this ancient poem by the Sufi Mystic Jalal Rumi (1207-1273). Rumi reminds us to live life with a spirit of accepting what unfolds, even welcoming all it.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
James Hazelwood, writer, bishop, and spiritual director, is the author of Weird Wisdom for the Second Half of Life and Everyday Spirituality: Discover a Life of Hope, Peace, and Meaning. He has a new book in process, a collection of essays on the two realms of life. It is due out this winter. His website is www.jameshazelwood.net
I've always appreciated the ambiguity and paradoxical nature of Lutheran theology. Trying to hold together two seemingly opposite principles together has seemed to me to be a better part of truth. It does not allow for much control, but it is a blessing of flexibility.
I really appreciate your words of wisdom today. I am going through many changes with my health, but Love reading both your books and your musings. I have come to realize we reallly don't have all that much control over what happens in our lives, but the older we get the wiser we become as long as God is the one we love, trust, and follow.