In my teen years, and for an embarrassingly long time after that, I thought I knew everything that didn’t have to do with math, science or actual facts. I never had a head for details, but I reckoned I had all the big questions figured out, especially on issues of right and wrong.
By the time I was twenty five, I disdained anyone who wasn’t as enlightened as I thought I was. Can you say insufferable?
That know-it-all phase is (mostly) in my past. Teaching teens helped the process of realization along. A precocious seventh grader at Masterman, (they were all precocious) mentioned a mantra repeated to him by his grandmother, which I found useful with my own granddaughter: Always certain, often wrong… Hmm.
I conceived a campaign to help my students understand the concept of metacognition: thinking about thinking. One of the big questions was: How do you know what you know? I began to ponder that question with increasing frequency. Turned out I knew a lot less than I’d thought. And I began to accept that some things are truly unknowable- especially when it comes to how people behave, and how they’re motivated.
In these days of exploding information it’s mind-boggling to consider the multitude of things we’re all absolutely sure of, aided and abetted by confirmation bias. The media provides competing and conflicting explanations for reality and truth. Welcome to the world of fake news. Get your unassaible facts right here! Truthiness, it appears, is the best we can do.
If the truth is out there, where, exactly, does it reside? Why isn’t it clear? The impossibility of answering these questions perhaps led me to embrace the notion of ambiguity: lacking in clarity; subject to more than one interpretation; leading to confusion, chaos, even. Okay, maybe it doesn’t lead to chaos, but much of the world doesn’t tolerate it very well, wants it eliminated. We want certainty and exactitude- unless we don’t.
Who would want to purposely confuse? Those who know how to employ ambiguity to their benefit. Politicians come to mind. Double-crossers and con artists. Poets and writers manipulating words, adding a deeper level of interpretation. Lovers playing games.
But those examples are about how to sew confusion. The aspect of ambiguity I find so appealing is the sense that uncertainty can be acceptable and advantageous. I found relief in realizing how much I didn’t know, and maybe wouldn’t ever completely comprehend. If we don’t already know, won’t we be more open to ideas?
The word ambiguity is ancient. It’s derived from Latin via Old French, and has related words/concepts in Indo-European languages such as Greek, German, Old English, Welsh, Irish and and Sanskrit. Throughout history, it seems, folks knew that things aren’t always what they seem.
I’ve read, and like to believe, that liberals are better at accepting ambiguity than conservatives. For sure, not just conservatives, but the world could benefit from embracing ambiguity.
And it’s fun to say. You can chew on it, and exercise your mouth at the same time. You start off in a position of alarm- mouth wide open, tongue back, ready to roll; then lips pucker- first a puff, then a hard pucker, lips draw back, teeth show, as cheeks pull back. Try it. Say it and then try embracing it.