Certainty

We certainly can’t be certain about anything. The world may be just a dream and the past a false memory. But even if we take a less skeptical approach and choose to believe what we see, the future remains completely undefined and open to anything. It has the illusive quality of a dream, fully uncommitting as to its reality; you can think about it and then dismiss it as you would any nightly image upon waking up. Yet at any moment a future is devoured by the present and sent into the past, and the past is more certain than anything since it can never be changed.

This sharp contrast between total uncertainty and absolute certainty feels frightening. First there is an infinity of options and possibilities. There is no limit to what might happen: Make your most fantastic guess and estimate the probability to be ridiculously low, there is still a positive chance that it may happen and the risk of a disaster can never be eliminated. No matter how carefully you deliberate, regardless of all precautions, when the moment arrives, any moderately detailed prediction is likely to be wrong and the newly arrived reality will stare mockingly into your face. “This is what you got for all your safeguards,” it laughs scornfully.

Better not choose anything then. Stay in your daydreams where everything can be freely imagined while making sure that all you have to do is to wake up and all misfortune will disappear.

Certainty can only be achieved if you do nothing, search for nothing and believe in nothing, for then you will be sure to make no mistake. At least that is what that poor coward thinks as he is hiding in his corner too fearful to check if reality is real. He is most certainly wrong.

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