Everyone wants a clear and definite answer for a question.
Anyone who speaks in a definite ýes’ or ‘no’ is preferred to someone who says
‘may be’. Most of us are taught that knowledge is meant to make people discern
what is right and what is wrong or to choose the best from a given set of
choices. Education is often meant to prepare students to develop the faculty to
know or at least to choose the right answer. More so in the last quarter of a century
when most examination questions are in the form of choosing from multiple
options. People build convictions around things and experiences, at times too
quickly and at times slowly.
Most people prefer to live in a world of binaries- yes or
no; black or white. That’s comfortable, efficient and even considered the right
way to live. Most of the crucial life decisions are based on such binaries. You
either pass or fail a test and there is nothing in between. In most games, you
either win or lose, though some games are occasionally drawn. Hardly any sports
lover wants it that way. Every one wants a winner and at least one loser at the
end of the game; in fact, most games produce more losers than winners. If the
game hasn’t produced a winner at the end of the stipulated time, find a way to
clinch the deal in favor of one. Even a ‘sudden death’ is preferable to a drawn
game! Football lovers like penalty shoot outs and sudden death rather than their
blood pressure shooting up in the anxiety of uncertainty.
Yes, there are opposing forces and contrasting realities in
the world we live. Yet, human experiences are not always like day and night. It
is not that on a given day we have equal measure of pleasure and pain. It is
not that a given academic test cut off indicates success or failure. It is not
that some people are honest and others are crooks. It is often that some are
less honest than others or some are less crooked than others. Real life is more
often being tentative or ‘uncertain’ rather than being certain.
Dig a bit deeper and you will find that this world of
binaries is a highly over-simplified and often imaginary world. In the real
world everyone is a winner at times and loser at other times. But we still
prefer to label people as either winners or losers; good or bad. That makes
choices easy for us. It is easy for us to cast our vote for a ‘good’ candidate
or to choose a ‘good’ school for our children. Or even create a clear caste
system of preferences, perceptions and labels for people around us and beyond
our vicinity. That sounds almost like analyzing anything in the world in a four-quadrant
BCG matrix (introduced first by Boston Consulting Group) or grouping the
destinies of all the people in the world under 12 zodiac signs or all the
people in the world into 16 ‘personality types’ using the MBTI (Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator).
None of us can escape the craving for certainty. Probably
our ancestors faced a world of greater uncertainties and by generations of
mutations and civilizations we have evolved to cut out uncertainties from our
mind by consciously pulling things into clear boxes, definitions and belief systems.
Yet, we are all certain that we live in an uncertain world! Well, who lived in
world of certainty, ever?
Dealing with uncertainty has become a required competence
for leadership today. While one has practically no escape from uncertainty, getting
comfortable with uncertainty is the harder part. Just as the ‘unknown’ is the
bigger field of knowledge, ‘uncertainty’ provides greater meaning to life.
Suspend certainty. Be tentative. Be tender, rather than
solid like a rock! Certainty is a path to delusion. Certainty is often suspension
of knowledge than expression of knowledge. The more we know about something the
less certain we are about it. Certainly, I am not claiming to be certain about
that, though!
‘The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning.
Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.’ – Erich Fromm,
Renowned psychoanalyst and philosopher of 20th Century
