Many believe in the afterlife, yet almost everyone fears death. It is no wonder that we are fascinated by the few people who have been “on the other side” and have been “reborn” to tell their story. Some of these testimonies are disturbing, others less so, but those who have been brought back to life say the same things, making us think about what comes after.
Because there must be something true.
1. The famous “light at the end of a tunnel” is a real thing.
2. You “leave your body” and see it lifeless as you float above it.
3. You see guardian angels appear in the room and are guided back into your body.
4. You receive a visit from your mother on your deathbed.
5. You see your deceased relatives who appear to be having a big party or otherwise happy.
6. You see your life flash before your eyes.
7. You see and hear everyone in the room but are unable to interact with them.
8. Almost all report feeling a deep sense of peace and tranquility, adding that they didn’t want to come back to life.
EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY
On October 21, 1929, this woman was born in Berkeley, California. Raised in a highly intellectual family—her mother was a respected writer, her father a famous anthropologist—it was no surprise when she became an early reader. She was also an early aspiring author, submitting a science-fiction short story to Astounding Science Fiction magazine at age eleven. After graduating from Berkeley High School in 1947, she attended Radcliffe College, where she majored in Renaissance French and Italian literature (she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1951). A year later, after getting an M.A. degree in French from Columbia University, she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship. While traveling to France on the Queen Mary to begin her Fulbright studies, she met and fell in love with an American historian (they married in Paris several months later).
The couple moved back to the states a few years later, eventually settling in Oregon. While raising three children, she wrote in the evenings and published her first science-fiction short story in 1962. She went on to become one of America’s most respected writers, best known for such sophisticated sci-fi and fantasy novels as The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Lathe of Heaven (1971).
Typically, a phrase like permanent intolerable uncertainty would be considered a description of something bad, but in this case, the idea is turned completely around when uncertainty is described as so beneficial that it is “the only thing that makes life possible.” When I first came across the passage, I didn’t immediately grasp its meaning. After a moment’s reflection, though, it became clear that the character Estevan was saying something profoundly important. If I were to summarize the essence of his message in my own words, it would go something like this:
“Even though human beings have absolutely no idea what life has in store for them, it is precisely this existential uncertainty that gives birth to the drama in human existence and, ultimately, to the meaning that can be found in one’s journey through life.”
In a 1947 book, one of my favorite authors made a similar point. If I had to provide a label for this approach to life, I’d call it celebrating uncertainty, or maybe embracing uncertainty. First, let’s look at the word itself: uncertainty.
Uncertainty is the ‘no guarantees’ clause in life—where absolutely nothing that people hope for, dream about, or work toward is certain to transpire. Uncertainty isn’t merely a word, it’s an existential condition. For most of us, the subject of uncertainty first emerges during adolescence. Around that time, we begin to wonder if we will live to a ripe, old age, or will our life be cut short—perhaps even dramatically short—by accident or illness? Will our plans play out according to our hopes and dreams, or prove to be foolish, unsatisfying, or disastrous? Will a promising romantic interest be reciprocated, and, if so, will it become permanent or short-lived—leaving us to pick up the pieces of a broken heart?
It is during our teen years when most people discover that the big question accompanying every single aspect of our existence is: “What is going to happen in my life?” And uncertainty is the word we use to describe this reality. Wrestling with the problem of uncertainty is also one of humanity’s oldest concerns. Our ancient ancestors, for example, lived in a world of constant, pervasive, and all-consuming uncertainty. They didn’t know from day to day if they would find enough food and water to survive. They couldn’t step outside a cave or other naturally protected area without knowing what large predator or life-threatening danger would emerge from the shadows. And when illness or injury struck, they stood by helplessly as disease and infection slowly sapped the life out of those they loved.
How did early humans respond to these and the countless other uncertainties of life? We now know that every single advance in human civilization—the development of methods of agriculture, the building of permanent structures, the domestication of animals, the formation of communal communities, the development of advanced weaponry, and, of course, the establishment of a formal religion—can be properly regarded as attempts to reduce the uncertainty and insecurity that dominated their lives. For them, there was no celebration of uncertainty, but rather a desire to fight it, to reduce it, and to bring the forces of nature under human control.
Thousands of years later, by the classical age of the Greeks and Romans, huge advances in knowledge and technology had been made, but the concept of uncertainty continued to remain a topic of great interest to the scholars and thinkers of the day. In the great historical evolution of ideas, the idea of fighting uncertainty was eventually supplanted by the idea of living with uncertainty.
As a species, so much of the uncertainty that plagued earlier humans no longer existed, and this greater knowledge resulted in a slightly more confident approach to life. The great English philosopher John Stuart Mill expressed it well in an 1843 treatise.
A century and a half before Mill wrote these words, the English playwright William Congreve planted yet another idea about uncertainty. His idea was so new and radical that it would take a few hundred years to fully germinate, but when it did, it became perhaps the dominant view on the subject. In Congreve’s case, he had a character in one of his plays articulate his bold idea that the goal was not merely to live with uncertainty, but to celebrate it as one of the great joys of life. Congreve’s great contribution was to regard uncertainty not as a problem to be solved but as an opportunity to be seized.
You saw that view expressed in the Erich Fromm quotation at the beginning of this post, and many others have expressed similar thoughts. One of my favorites comes from a man best known for his political and leadership skills. But he was also an extremely talented writer, as he demonstrated in this provocative observation on this theme.
In this observation, Churchill lays out one of the great truths about human existence: if we knew the outcomes of our actions in advance, there would be neither drama nor suspense in life—and even more important, no thrill of victory, no satisfaction after overcoming a major obstacle, and no motivation to self-correct or redeem oneself after a defeat.
