Opinion Today: Maybe we should embrace uncertainty

There are some surprising benefits to doing so.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story January 15, 2024 By Neel V. Patel Staff Editor, Opinion Freezing temperatures hitting huge swaths of the country. Multiple court cases embroiling former President Donald Trump, still the Republican front-runner in what's sure to be a fractious election season. Ongoing wars in Gaza and in Ukraine. Lingering questions around Covid as it and other respiratory illnesses hit the population hard, again, this winter. Those are just some stories that we were sitting with this weekend — each one rife with its own set of questions that have no clear answers. And we can expect the rest of the year to have more questions and more uncertainty in store for us. That's probably not very comforting to read. But perhaps it should be. In her guest essay for Opinion, the author Maggie Jackson makes a strong argument for why uncertainty in our lives should not be something we flee from — but instead something we embrace and use as a tool to better understand the world around us, and to make positive change for ourselves. It's quite a challenging appeal. When we feel uncertain, our instinct is to either find answers, or cope with the uncertainty by finding a way to put it out of our minds. Coming to grips with simply not knowing something and accepting that feels especially out of place in the modern day, when our smartphones beckon us to resolve uneasy feelings as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. I find the idea of embracing uncertainty to be especially difficult as a journalist. My entire career is built on the habits I've cultivated: to ask direct questions, to utilize whatever tools I have at my disposal to get to the bottom of something and to tell the rest of the world what I've found when I'm done. But Jackson makes it clear that leaning into uncertainty doesn't mean simply sitting in the proverbial dark. Accepting uncertainty can be a path forward to actually finding the information you seek. It's an approach that may help you shake off biases and assumptions, to find new starting points from which to seek knowledge. To that end, it could really be considered a valuable tool for journalists and readers alike. Read the guest essay: Holly Warburton Guest Essay How to Thrive in an Uncertain World It's harder than ever to predict the future. That should be a positive to embrace. By Maggie Jackson Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Here's what we're focusing on today: Editors' Picks The Editorial Board The Responsibility of Republican Voters In Iowa and other states, Republican voters have the opportunity and the obligation to select a presidential candidate who will uphold the rule of law. 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