Living With Uncertainty
By Dr. Tony Magana
The recent world-wide panic over the Swine flu pandemic reminded us again how we fear uncertainty
One of the greatest gifts possessed by humankind is the ability to consider one’s being and ponder what the future will bring. Unlike others in the animal kingdom we spend a lot of thought in determining future moves that will benefit us beyond just immediate comfort or gratification.
We are in a constant chess game hoping the next move will be a step towards a better life. Our competition is the randomness of negative acts or events that can befall our being despite our best attempt to scout ahead.
Philosophers theorize that man formed family units, then tribes, and then nations in an attempt to escape uncertainty. Living in a society with set rules means that if you know the rules you can hopefully predict what will happen if you follow or chose not to follow those rules. The sciences of biology, physics, and all the disciplines is about learning how to predict future events.
Essentially every culture that has developed on our planet has had some form of religious belief. The idea that there is a deity greater than ourselves who provides for us a just life here or in the hereafter if we follow a path to salvation remains a major tenet of man’s cultural experience. The Bible and its teachings do show us how to deal with uncertainty.
The recent panic of people and nations about the Influenza A H1N1 virus again demonstrated how fearful individuals and their cumulative self , society, can be in the face of uncertainty. The human mind has a unique way of becoming fixated on a threat at the subconscious level even when we should be able to reason rationally that the risk is not severe or immediate. This is a left over from 9/11 when America experienced a vulnerability that deeply penetrated the American psyche.
Often what scares us is not the particular or specific threat of an event or agent but rather that it is a putting a big sign in front of our face that we really do live in an uncertain world. We brush our teeth every morning, watch what we eat, put on our seatbelt, put away money in our retirement account and plan for those golden years.
We become convinced that through ritual and routine we can bring order and predictability to our lives. We are in control until some horrible accident happens or some new disease crops up. We never accept that a plane crash had no preventable reason, that a person did not get cancer because of some preventable exposure, or that a relationship went bad except because of a mistake. Any untoward event which cannot be explained is too much of a jolt to our sanity.
Whenever we see calamity, disaster, or epidemic we have to learn to avoid fixation on cause. To often in our modern society we spend so much time worrying about preventing this or that , that we miss the opportunity to enjoy the moment.
The truth is that we are all mortal being without set destiny or lifespan. No amount of effort will ever yield a truly predictable life. However, if we accept our uncertainty in the sense that it tells us we have a limited opportunity to live and act well then perhaps we can use to it to help guide us.
Tell your kids you love them, take a moment to admire your wife, or do that charity work you always said you wanted to do.
The miracle of life is that such wonderful things are often available to us and the tragedy of life is when we have lived worrying about the uncertainty in those things we cannot change while neglecting those real graces God has given us.
Thanks for reading Contempo Magazine blog which discusses issues for McAllen, the Rio Grande Valley, and America from a conservative Hispanic point of view. Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, served as an officer in Army Reserve, and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years. He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and also writes for the American Daily Review
